I can’t think of many Thanksgiving holidays that have carried this kind of collective angst to every table across America.

Perhaps that makes it one of the most poignant turkey dinners you’ll ever have in your life.

These difficult times in our country are a signal to us to give this time with our families and friends all the weight it deserves, and it should remind us that love and decency are what really matter in our lives, and that there’s a place that our families can go to find it.

I call it battening down the hatches, which is the act of drawing a circle of protection around all that you hold dear. This Thanksgiving I’m going to have extra candles, extra wine and extra hugs, and let everyone know that we are family, and that there’s always a warm place they can turn to-where the tea is on, the porch light shines, and there is consistency and stability somewhere in their lives. We are, after all, more than the sum of our fears or our political strife.

I am a huge fan of illustrator and artist Norman Rockwell, who depicted an American Thanksgiving as only he could. He had the look and feel of the America we remember on the tip of his brush and his pencil, as if our collective spirit inhabited his soul, although Rockwell always said, “I paint life as I want it to be.”

Name another artist who ever did it as well, this “painting life as I want it to be.”

I believe his depiction of a family sitting around the Thanksgiving table is as American as any painting you will ever see, and no matter your race, your religion, your sexual preference or nationality, you can still conclude and celebrate the idea that there is an abundance of things to be grateful for.

That’s what this Thanksgiving must be about: taking stock of our families– crazy Aunt Edna, the radical nephew, the impudent uncle, the sleeping grandfather. And taking stock of what we already have in our lives: the roof that protects us, the hope that encourages us, the very lives we are blessed to live.

I was looking at pictures of Thanksgiving throughout history, and there is no mistaking it has always been a special day-celebrating first the survival of the pilgrims after a long and deadly winter, but also this idea of gratitude, for country, for family, for abundance and god.

In these pictures grade schoolers hold a Thanksgiving pageant in 1972, wearing Indian headbands made out of construction paper; an Uncle Sam balloon makes its way down Broadway during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2005; in 1918, New York City hosts a dinner with soldiers; a turkey dinner at a Pennsylvania country house in 1940 with the bustle of a family that is loading its plates; Space Shuttle and crew members posing for a photo during their Thanksgiving Day meal on the middeck of the shuttle in 2008.

Don’t mess with Thanksgiving. That’s what I’m here to say. You can be condescending about Christmas and it’s materialism, suspicious of the Fourth of July and it’s nationalism, but Thanksgiving? I’m not letting that one go.

There is something sacred and stoic about a family gathering to share a meal together-one that bows it’s head and gives thanks for all its blessings. Centered in the warmth and dignity of family and freedom, there is no greater moment, at least to me, than that.

This Thanksgiving, with the concept of family under siege, with the idea of love for one’s country under threat-this is the year to reinstall a sense of family and community into the day.

Do it well.

In an online article, someone echoed the sentiments of a thousand other articles just like it with the headline, “Six Thanksgiving Traditions It’s Time To Stop Practicing — Like, Now.”

The author of the article says that watching football, mischaracterizing Squanto and participating in Black Friday are horrible things for Americans to do and we must refrain from doing those things immediately.

We are, she said, allowed to eat turkey, but under no circumstances should the president be allowed to pardon one.

I kid you not.

As the country gets a little nuttier each day, I batten down my hatches even more.

I’m fairly confident 50 years from now, long after I’m gone, my children will be sitting around a table somewhere, fireplace going, turkey in the oven, pumpkin pie at the ready.

Because what I’m going to tell them on Thursday is that they are free to think for themselves, to decide what is special to them without having to define it to anyone, and to celebrate it in any way they choose. And that it’s not insensitive to enjoy your family or to celebrate your abundance.

Being grateful should always be a virtue of humanity.

And if you add a turkey to that grateful feeling on the fourth Thursday of November, well, that’s Thanksgiving.

Enjoy it.