Thanksgiving was the only day we said grace at the dinner table when I was young. My father would ask us to take a moment to remember the underprivileged in other parts of the world, and those who did not have enough to eat, insisting that we were very lucky, indeed, to be sitting down to such a fine dinner together.

Then he’d make quite a show of sharpening the carving knife by drawing the blade back and forth menacingly against the steel.