Saving Thanksgiving

[TygrBright]

I can't express how much I love the notion of a holiday dedicated to giving thanks for all the ordinary and extraordinary blessings in our lives throughout a year. Were it but that, my enjoyment would be unshadowed and my efforts at celebration much more wholehearted.

My problem isn't the gratitude part.

It's the history part.

Let's face it, the history is pretty squicky. Essentially, it's the Plymouth Colony saying to the Wampanoag, "Geez, y'all, we wouldn't have made it without you - let's have a nice celebratory feast together before we get started wiping y'all from the face of the continent!"

So... the whole Pilgrim's Hat, "Indian" corn, horn-of-plenty overflowing with the Three Sisters produce symbolism kind of takes the edge off my enjoyment.

I wonder what it would take, to divorce the concept of a holiday devoted to being thankful for the wonders of life over the year?

Move the date? Certainly stop teaching that creepy "Thanksgiving Story" history without the actual context around it. Change the symbols somehow?

Just musing, on this day before the day.

And for the record, one thing I'm thankful for, this and every year since 2001, is DU and all the wonderful people here. Glad there's an excuse to let y'all know.

Now I'm-a cue up The Restaurant and start labeling 8x10 glossies with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back...

appreciatively,
Bright

[Ocelot II]

1. Here's a take on that very issue in an editorial from my morning paper:

...Thanksgiving, too, has come in for some rethinking. Some modern Wampanoag, whose ancestors helped the Pilgrims survive their first, harsh winter, now observe the holiday as a national day of mourning. Certainly, Thanksgiving is a legitimate candidate for reform, but we hope it survives that reform more or less intact.

The act of giving thanks is an expression of humility, a character trait we could use more of. Thanksgiving brings us face to face with an unsettling truth: that the bounty we enjoy is not ours by right. It comes to us through hard work or providence, grace or accident, but not because we are somehow better than those who have less. Especially this year, when the pandemic has cost so many so much.

Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday involving sometimes awkward family time, near-compulsory overeating, troubling historical roots and anxious anticipation of the starting gun for Black Friday shoppers. But it also gives us a chance to suspend our perpetual political knife fights long enough to agree that we have much to be grateful for.

To whom we express that gratitude, or whether we express any at all, is up to us — and that's another reason to give thanks.

https://www.startribune.com/pondering-the-meaning-of-thanksgiving/600120122/

[TygrBright]

2. Yeah, I resemble that opining. Thanks. n/t

[flotsam2]

3. A song I learned in elementary school helped define my Thankgiving thoughts

New England born and raised I was happy to know we prepared for winter and should celebrate the bounty of the year. I loved the first verse:
"Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest-home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin:
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest-home!"

May your bounty be plentiful!