It is a wicked world, in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great and his power to do good is so slight, but here we are, the week of our beloved national feast, and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.

I am thankful to be alive. In Minnesota, the lakes are freezing over in late November and some men who envision a leadership role for themselves take their snowmobiles out onto the thin ice and fall through and drown in the cold water — their last thought in this life: Boy, was this dumb or what? — and so far I have not been one of them. Caution was bred into me: I never played football or hunted or made a hobby of pharmaceuticals or flung myself off a cliff while clinging to a kite. I read books instead.

I am thankful for living in a place where winter gets good and cold and you need to build a fire in a stove and wrap a blanket around you. Cold draws people closer together. Crime drops. Acts of kindness proliferate between strangers. I have been in Los Angeles on a balmy day in January and seen the glum faces of people poking at their salads in outdoor restaurants — people in Minnesota are much cheerier, lurching across the ice, leaning into the wind as sheets of snow swirl up in their faces. Because cold weather takes the place of personal guilt. Maybe you haven’t been the shining star you should have been, but now is not the time to worry about it.

I am thankful for e-mail, which allows us to keep in touch with our children, and for the ubiquity of fresh coffee, the persistence of good newspapers, the bravery of artists. None of us is self-sufficient, despite what the Republicans claim. Every good thing, every morsel of food, comes directly from God, who expects us to pay attention and be joyful, a large task for people from the Midwest, where our idea of a compliment is, It could have been worse.

I am thankful of course for Thanksgiving, a joyful and simple day that never suffered commercial exploitation and so is the same day as when I was a boy and we played touch football on the frozen turf and came to the table sweaty and in high spirits, and had to keep an eye out for flying food. My sister had good moves; you’d look away for an instant and she’d flip her knife and park a pat of butter on your forehead. Nobody throws food at our table, but in the giddiness of the festive moment, I have held a spoonful of cranberry for a moment and measured the distance to Uncle Earl, his gleaming head like El Capitan bent over the plate.

As I grew up, Thanksgiving evolved perfectly. It used to be that men had the hard work, which is to sit in the living room and make conversation about gas mileage and lower back pains, and women got the good job, which is cooking. Women owned the franchise, and men milled around the trough mooing and if any man dared enter the kitchen he was watched closely lest he touch something and damage it permanently. But I bided my time, and the aunts who ran the show grew old, and young liberated lady relatives came along who were proud of their inability to cook, and one year I revolted and took over the kitchen and now I am It.

Except for gravy and pie crust, which take patience and practice, Thanksgiving dinner is as easy to make as it is to eat. You’re a right-handed batter in a park that’s 150 feet down the left-field line — it doesn’t take a genius to poke it out.

Years of selective breeding have produced turkeys that are nothing but cooking pouches with legs. You rub the bird’s inside with lemon, stuff it with bread dressing seasoned with sage and tarragon and jazzed up with chunks of sausage and nuts and wild rice, shove it in a hot oven, meanwhile you whomp up yams and spuds and bake your pies. The dirty little secret of the dinner is melted animal fats: in all the recipes, somewhere it says Melt a quarter-pound of butter.

Think of the fancy dishes you slaved over that became disasters, big dishes that were lost in the late innings. Here’s roast turkey, which tastes great and all you do is baste. You melt butter, you nip at the wine, and when the turkey is done, you seat everyone, carve the bird, sing the Doxology, and pass the food.

The candles are lit in the winter dusk, and we look at each other, the old faces and some new ones, and silently toast the Good Life, which is here before us. Enjoy the animal fats and to hell with apologies. No need to defend our opinions or pretend to be young and brilliant. We still have our faculties and the food still tastes good to us.

Walt Whitman said, “I find letters from God dropped in the street and every one is signed by God’s name”. Thanksgiving is one of those signed letters.