More than any other date on the calendar, Thanksgiving has remained private and personal, without the trappings that spoil the r

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问题     More than any other date on the calendar, Thanksgiving has remained private and personal, without the trappings that spoil the rest of contemporary life.【F1】On this holiday, Americans are allowed to be as prayerful or as worldly as they choose, with no one complaining that they have somehow taken the thanks out of Thanksgiving.
    For all the public talk about family values, no other holiday brings generations together without the lure of anything more tangible than a good dinner. Distractions are gloriously limited: the malls are closed and the televised sports offerings sparse.【F2】Unlike New Year’s Eve, no one feels compelled to have the time of one’s life or broods excessively when reality fails to conform to these exaggerated expectations. The perfect Thanksgiving is timeless.
    No gastronomical(art of cooking good food or the pleasure of eating it)theory can explain the enduring appeal of the Thanksgiving dinner. Americans have grown accustomed to utter commercialism taken to excess, but somehow Thanksgiving has resisted the lure of an age of agreed.【F3】The greeting-card producers and the florists must lament a national holiday in which they are doomed to play such a minor role. For if one cares to send the very best, one flies home for Thanksgiving. Even the TV networks have never figured out a way to transform Thanksgiving into a prime-time pageant.
     【F4】Politicians are happily silent on Thanksgiving, and such restraint is appropriate for a holiday that commemorates one of the rare occasions when the white man treated the Indian with dignity and respect. But public officials may also be restrained by the experience of Franklin Roosevelt, the only modem President to try to tamper with Thanksgiving. Back in 1939, Roosevelt touched off a patriotic uprising when he issued a proclamation unilaterally shifting Thanksgiving from the then customary last Thursday in November(the 30th)to the fourth Thursday(the 23rd)as a way of granting Depression-era merchants a longer Christmas selling season.
     【F5】What adds an odd, almost innocent flavor to this bygone controversy is the old-fashioned notion that department stores wait patiently until the end of Thanksgiving to unveil Santa’s workshop. In a nation where the mall never gets tedious and seven-days-a-week shopping seems valued as a civic religion, Thanksgiving stands out as an oasis of quietness and a reminder of the values that once tempered America’s materialism. This Thursday give thanks for the one holiday that cannot be bought.
【F1】

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答案感恩节里,美国人可以随自己所愿,选择虔诚祈祷,或者平凡度日,没有人会抱怨说美国人的感恩节在某种程度上已经不再感恩了。

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