Thanksgiving.

It is a national holiday. A day we take off work to do what? To sit around a table with family and friends to eat too much turkey and stuffing and cranberry jelly and green bean casserole topped off with pumpkin pie? To ramble on with relatives and friends we see too seldom and catch up on the news of the family we love? To try to tiptoe around the toxic political issues of the day that could surround our pleasant family gathering with a black cloud?

Let the Old Scribbler make a suggestion. In my living room is a low bench on which sits a large black screen. It is a TV set that is way smarter than I. Sometimes, when the wind is out of the west and the moon is in the seventh house, I can push the right buttons on the remote control gizmo and make it play. This week, praise to all, I was able to view Ken Burns’ latest epic chronicling the American Revolutionary War. I recommend it to you. It is streaming on PBS.

Oh, we all know the story, or thought we did. How a bunch of Yankee rabble rousers dumped some tea in Boston Harbor. That ticked off the Brits, and they shot up Lexington and Concord. Then all the state leaders went down to Philly, promoted George Washington, and adopted the Declaration of Independence. And King George said, “OK, I give up. You win.” Right?

Negatory, Grasshopper. It was a miracle. A magical, mystical, can you believe it happened miracle. And, through hard work (it only took him 10 years), Burns & Co. laid out the incredible struggle that gave birth to the wonderful and unique nation we inherited. Unless you are a bona fide history professor, like my pal, Jack Bauman, the Southport Island sage, you might not have known that John Adams, one of our founding fathers, was the defense lawyer for the British soldiers charged with firing into a Boston mob in an event we know as the Boston Massacre. Yes, JA got them off, too. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the first victim of the Boston Massacre was a black man named Crispus Attucks.

I know the Patriots lost the battle of Boston’s Bunker Hill, but I didn’t know that they killed or wounded nearly half of the attacking British Red Coats. Those were the largest casualties the British army suffered until World War I.

Did you know that a British warship shelled Falmouth (Now Portland), then the skipper sent Royal Marines ashore to burn down the homes? The same British ship frequently poked its nose into the waters of Boothbay and bought (or stole) food from the locals.

Did you think that many of the founding fathers, the same guys who wrote and adopted what is called the greatest sentence in the English language, were slaveholders? You know the sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

By Burns’ count, 5,000 black freedmen and slaves fought for the Patriots while 10,000 joined the Loyalist/British armed forces.

I didn’t know Gen. Washington lost more battles than he won. Still, he was able to preserve the Continental Army and keep ahead of the world’s best fighting army. We all have heard of Valley Forge, where Washington’s army spent the bitter winter of 1777 in unheated tents and sheds, wearing tattered clothing and eating very little. Still, they emerged tougher and more determined to fight. In August, he whipped the Brits at Saratoga, capturing some 6,000 of them. This victory convinced the French that we had a chance at victory, and they threw in with us.

Over the course of the bloody eight-year-long war, the founding fathers managed to put aside their major regional and petty differences and hold the new nation together. They amassed about $115 million in debt and had no way to repay it.

The French finally arrived to help Washington trap the British army on the Yorktown peninsula, and they threw in the towel. As we sit around the Thanksgiving table, we might focus on the struggle waged by our forefathers and foremothers and bow our heads in thanks.

For our world didn’t begin with smartphones, snarky political posts, and Black Friday’s hot deals. It started when a bunch of immigrants got mad at being pushed around by folks from away, the same folks who sent the Army into our streets to make us pay the taxes we didn’t want in the first place. And as tough as our politics seem today, our founding fathers and mothers had it a lot worse.

Meanwhile, will you please pass the stuffing and gravy? I think I might have room for a second helping.