Thanksgiving: Can You Have it Both Ways?

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a little left of center.  As much as I love many of the traditions associated with holidays, I am a bleeding heart, and I don't want anyone reading my blog and inferring that I don't give a damn about the origins of the occasions I write about.  Today, in an effort to sum up my feelings about Thanksgiving, I consulted my handy dandy copy of the Kenneth Davis book "Don't Know Much About History."  (Very much recommended reading, for people of all ages.  Check it out on Amazon.com.)  Davis debunks some myths about the origin of the holiday, namely the one that says Native American Squanto et. al helped the newly arrived Pilgrims catch, hunt, and grow enough food to supply a multiple-day holiday called Thanksgiving.  Okay, so it's not so much that that's a lie...the problem is the omission, the one the vast majority of modern day Americans never know or think about.  The problem is what happened afterward:  the continual slaughter of Native American people through disease transmission and outright violence by the Pilgrims and other white settlers.

In case you live under a rock, there's this thing called Wikipedia.  I looked up "Thanksgiving (United States)" there to see if I couldn't find some more information than what was provided in Don't Know Much About History.  Through that page, I followed a link to the Wikipedia page "National Day of Mourning (United States Protest)."  It details the history of Thanksgiving from the perspective of some Native Americans.  The regular Thanksgiving page has maybe two lines about the Native American genocide.  Even Davis's book condenses historical fact to the point where it "blends in" with the story, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb.  The National Day of Mourning page does a better job of explaining why even today's Thanksgiving celebration has its roots in oppression of Native peoples.  The United American Indians of New England (UAINE) is the group which sponsors the event, and, according to the Wikipedia page, they say that "the Pilgrims did not find a new and empty land.  Every inch of land they claimed was Indian land.  They also say that the Pilgrims immigrated as part of a commercial venture and that they introduced sexism, racism, anti-gay and lesbian bigotry, jails, and the class system."  If all those things come with your run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving celebration, I'll skip the turkey, thanks.

Wait!  I'm not talking about every tradition associated with the holiday.  I'm talking about not celebrating a particular day without being mindful of what that day means to other people.  There is nothing inherently wrong with getting together with friends and family, cooking and eating good food, and expressing love and thanks for each other.  Heck, that sounds kind of like heaven to me.  I'm going to do all those things tomorrow, but it won't be a celebration of Thanksgiving.  With a little research, it was easy to find out how blood-soaked the origins of the holiday really are.  What I'll be doing tomorrow might be more aptly titled "Giving Thanks Day," or, the somewhat more common "Turkey Day" (Tofurkey day for some).  Maybe this will be the year I squash my social anxiety and add some social commentary to my thanks when it's my turn at the table.  Silence can be a slippery form of acquiescence, and,while guilt solves nothing, neither does inaction.