I have recently discovered a songwriter named Ben Rector. While I cannot vouch for all of his songs, he recently released a Christmas album that caught my ear. One of the songs, called “The Thanksgiving Song,” had a particularly poignant lyric: “We’ve made it through, I do believe, the longest year in history.” Obviously written during this year’s pandemic, I found myself in agreement. In so many ways, 2020 has seemed to drag on and on. Christmas of 2019 seems as a distant memory to me, as do most events that occurred pre-pandemic. While this year may seem like the longest one in our lifetimes, there was an even more pronounced time period in human history.
