We should all be grateful that Thanksgiving is no longer celebrated as in the olden days, in the traditional American ways. People who are stuck in gridlock this week, on highways, in airports or within their own intestines, may grumble, but Miss Manners can assure them that things used to be worse.

She realizes how disorienting this is to those given to deploring our cultural and moral deterioration as evidenced by the debased celebrations of patriotic and religious holidays as occasions for self-indulgence. Didn't Thanksgiving used to be a day in which pious folk celebrated peace with wholesome food?

Would our kindergarten teachers have lied to us?

Let us say, rather, that they put a kindly and valiant spin on customs that would now come under their own zero-tolerance policies.

Fortunately, there is enough doubt about which was the first real Thanksgiving to allow for the development of those comprehensible narratives we call history. The Pilgrims have captured the role in popular entertainment, with the Puritans as their understudies, especially after the population could no longer tell them apart. But in anticipation of the modern custom of extolling diversity by having each segment of the population vie for credit, serious claims were also made by the French Huguenots in Florida, the Spanish in Texas, the English in Virginia, and the folks (excluding the summer people) in Maine.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, life was rough enough in all those places to inspire settlers to proclaim days of thanks to God whenever the routine torments of nature gave them a respite, which was not often. Thanksgiving for having vanquished enemies was also common -- as common, that is, as the thankers' victories -- and anticipatory thanks were offered on credit for help with future vanquishing.

That last custom, along with its milder but also historic application to team sports, we have more or less maintained. Others we have let lapse.

While we prate of good fellowship as a defining element of Thanksgiving, we overlook a stunning feature of the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving, which was a show of arms. The three-day Plymouth version of the first Thanksgiving featured hunting and target practice as a way of demonstrating their prowess in case their native guests had ideas about displacing them. Turkeys and targets continued to be shot at Thanksgiving celebrations up until the mid-19th century, when Americans were busy giving thanks for shooting one another.

True, the modern Thanksgiving features family bickering, from which full-fledged feuds sometimes emerge. But that is hardly the same thing.

Overeating is another comparatively tepid custom of ours. Early settlers were rarely lucky enough to have the chance, which is why they were truly thankful for a good harvest, while we are more likely to complain about being stuffed. Public carousing and drunkenness, such as we have relegated to Spring Break week, routinely characterized their celebrations. Begging is another traditional American Thanksgiving custom, lasting until the 1930s, when it was replaced -- by presidential proclamation, in the interest of the economy -- by shopping. We have now pushed both begging and Christmas shopping back to Halloween.

Having thus thrown off the shackles of the past, we are left with a charming holiday of feasts and families. And for that, Miss Manners is thankful.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Two or three times a year, I am invited to dinner at a friend's parents' home, usually for informal family affairs.

I am almost never offered a beverage by my host, hostess or their daughter. I suspect they mean for everyone to help themselves, but I feel uncomfortable hauling open the refrigerator and grabbing something. What is the proper thing to do in such a situation?

GENTLE READER: Try pathos. Miss Manners is afraid that it is the only polite method. Without authorization -- something along the lines of "There are soft drinks in the refrigerator if anyone wants them" -- your hosts' failure to be hospitable does not justify breaking into their supplies.

The one request that is always proper is for water. You put your hand to your throat, assume an apologetic look (brows knitted over a sad little smile) and say, "I'm sorry, but I'm terribly thirsty. Could I trouble you for a glass of water?"

With any luck, they will ask if you would prefer something else, but this might even shake loose the general permission to help yourself.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Per the invitation my husband and I received to a cocktail party, the dress code was "tenue de ville."

However, after a long day at work, my husband chose the embarrassment of being underdressed to the annoyance of being uncomfortable. He wore dress pants and a dress shirt, but left the tie at home.

When we arrived, the party's hostess skipped the greeting to ask my husband where his tie was. In front of other guests, she said she was sorry she did not have an extra tie, seeming to imply that my husband could not attend the party sans tie.

My husband stomped off after explaining he did not have a tie. She then asked me to ask my husband to go home to get a tie. Since she has a higher position in my husband's workplace, he felt he had to comply. I realize that by the rules of this game my husband was at fault for failing to wear a tie. But, was the hostess' reaction appropriate?

GENTLE READER: If you are asking whether a hostess should let a guest get away with being twice rude, the answer is a sad yes. Hosts should set dress standards, but should not enforce them at the door and risk embarrassing their guests.

But didn't you tell Miss Manners that your husband was volunteering to be embarrassed? Then why is he indignant -- as opposed to disappointed -- that this turned out to be the case? True, the embarrassment should have come from his knowing he was wrong, rather than the hostess's pointing it out, but you gave little indication that he would supply it. On the contrary, he was willing to respect the lady only as his professional superior, not as his hostess. Yet he was outraged that she treated him as a subordinate rather than a guest.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband died in July. I put a black ribbon on our front door, which is still there. It makes me sad every time I come home and see it, but I was told that putting black bunting on your front door was the proper thing to do. I would like to know how long I should leave it on my door.

GENTLE READER: Take it down now. While the custom is rarely practiced these days and Miss Manners can't imagine who told you that propriety demanded it, its function is to symbolize that the house is in mourning and thus discourage any frivolous approaches. When it makes you sad instead of protecting you, it should be removed.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My daughter and I host a Christmas tea every year -- usually a couple of weeks before Christmas (around the 15th or so). This year, because of the busy schedules of many of our 200 guests, the tea will be in early December.

Since there aren't too many days between Thanksgiving Day and the day of the tea this year, would it be appropriate to mail the invitations before Thanksgiving? I usually send them out the day after Thanksgiving.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners appreciates your reluctance to start in on Christmas before Thanksgiving, but your busy friends need at least two weeks' advance notice if they are to schedule your party before filling up their calendars. Having been bombarded with Christmas-related advertising since Halloween, they are unlikely to accuse you of rushing things.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: As a senior manager in an office, I receive many employee visitors throughout the day. I encourage employees to stop by, as I have an open door policy.

As most of these visits are impromptu, I am usually in the middle of a project or other task and have many documents on my desk. I am surprised at how many people will ask about the documents on my desk! Just today, as I was working on a confidential acquisition, a co-worker stopped by, saw the document on my desk, and started quizzing me on what I was working on.

Miss Manners will not be happy to hear that my response was a question also -- "Do you have a habit of reading things on other people's desks?"

OK -- I know I was wrong. Is there a better response? Not only is this not their business, in many cases information needs to be confidential.

GENTLE READER: Shut the door.

Miss Manners realizes how shocking a shut-door policy appears to those who believe in the non-hierarchal workplace in spite of the obvious fact that there is no such thing. But your open-door policy isn't working. It is not a defense of this frank but rude snooping to point out that you are encouraging your employees to ignore boundaries.

The simple act of knocking reminds people that you are working, and makes your willingness to stop and listen to them all the more gratifying. It also gives you time to put your blotter on top of confidential papers.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My original proposal was to abolish Thanksgiving Day, but I have been talked into a compromise. I recommend that we rename this so-called holiday National Cheapskate and Freeloaders Day, which is what the holiday has evolved into.

As I wrote to you once before, I gave up my so-called restaurant license at home and decided to stop patronizing all those invitees who never reciprocated in return. Their excuse often was, "Oh, you are such a good cook we could never prepare anything that might please YOU."

Miss Manners, all they would have to do is invite us over and order a pizza and beer and soda and we would be happy. Hinting and being downright rude and demanding still does not get the message across to invite us over to their place for a change. Since there are so many restaurants out there that would appreciate our business, we will be patronizing them over the holidays.

A message to all you freeloaders and cheapskate parasites whom we entertained all these years and were overlooked by in return: "The free ride is over! Celebrate on your own; your gastronomic chiseling days are over." We are tired of being hosts to such parasites.

Can I get you to agree with me on this very legitimate complaint? I am sure there are many people who feel likewise, but are too embarrassed to say anything.

GENTLE READER: Or too tolerant or too sociable to become quite so bitter. Miss Manners remembers you, but was hoping you had gotten over it by now.

Mind you, she thoroughly agrees about the importance of reciprocation and shares your distaste for this particular excuse. But the sad fact is that most people really never learned to entertain, even simply, and you might make allowances for people you like who demonstrate their goodwill by inviting you out, doing you favors and otherwise trying to hold up their share of the friendship. When you find that they did give a Thanksgiving party -- which is to say, that they do entertain, they just don't entertain you -- it will be cause enough to give up on them.

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