As far as I know, there’s no concrete evidence that the Pilgrims and Indians actually sat down to Thanksgiving dinner the last Thursday in November in the year 1621.

But George Washington and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it so and so it has been all these years.

But it’s time for a change.

President-elect Barack Obama said so and millions agreed with him.

My vote was not cast for Obama, but he doesn’t know that, so I’m going to go ahead and suggest a few changes that he might want to consider.

The first one has to do with the celebration of Thanksgiving.

Since Halloween has been deemed a time of Satan worship, no longer can little children pull a sheet over their heads and holler “Boo!” or chant “Double, double, toil and trouble” as they stir their cauldrons, so let’s just do away with Halloween altogether and get right on to Thanksgiving.

With Halloween out of the way, let’s move back Thanksgiving to the second Thursday in November. That way, we can be thankful without Black Friday crowding in on us. And, too, that will give us much more time for the commercialization of the holiday a.k.a. Holy Day.

The second change should be a new national anthem. There’s not one singer in a hundred that can reach those high notes without busting a blood vessel or shattering glass, and my ears can’t take much more of the screeching. And, too, singing about the red glare of rockets, the bursting of bombs, the “gloom of the grave” and the “foul footsteps’ pollution” (it’s all in here) is an odd way to honor our country and does little to stir my patriotic spirit.

My suggestion for a national anthem is “America the Beautiful.” “Oh, beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain. For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. America! America. God shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”

That seems more like a national anthem to me.

And, while we’re making changes on the national front, let’s go ahead and do away with the Daylight Savings Time. I’ve about had it with falling back and springing forward. Let’s just decide on one time and let it be. Getting off schedule is hard on old folks and babies, so we don’t need to do it.

And last – and probably should have been first – let’s put prayer back in our schools. The world has gone to hell in a hand basket since we took it out. Children sassing their Mamas and Daddies, 8 year olds killing folks and students shooting up their schools, stabbing their teachers and terrorizing their classmates.

In the Dark Ages, we never did things like that. We didn’t even think about doing things like that. The more defiant among us would chew gum in school and mark in a library book. And, if we got caught doing either one, we would write 100 times “I will not chew gum in school” or go to the “cloak” room and take three licks.

But back then, we started the day with morning devotional that began with the Pledge of Allegiance followed by reading verses from the Bible and prayer. We closed the devotional time by singing songs like “My Grandfather’s Clock,” and “Clementine.”

Morning devotional started our school days off right, got us in the right frame of mind so we didn’t want to rob banks or kill folks. And on Fridays we had assembly and we followed the same “schedule” except on a grand scale. Pledge, prayer and songs.

The songs that we sang in school made our hearts merry and proud and there was something comforting and meaningful about the words we uttered to honor our flag and our God.

Then we changed all of that. Some change is good. Some is not.

May God give us the wisdom to know the difference.