By Tom Burke
Among harvest festivals worldwide, our Thanksgiving is a good one. It has all the required elements: It’s part of America’s creation legend, centered around food and family, celebrates the bounty of the land, and tradition marks the occasion. (However, while turkey remains primary, streamed green beans have replaced the French’s Fried-Onion green bean casserole, cranberry relish the canned cranberry sauce, and we’ve switched to non-dairy mashed potatoes for our lactose-intolerants, and running a 5K Turkey Trot has replaced watching the Macy’s Product-Placement Parade.
Many other cultures celebrate harvest festivals: In Korea it’s Chuseok; Russia has Pokrov; and although Germany’s Oktoberfest has, alas, morphed into a world-wide beer bash, India’s multi-cultural subcontinent celebrates scores of Thanksgivings with Pongal and Makar Sankranti being two highlights. There are lots of others.
But in addition to the common elements of most harvest festivals, America’s Thanksgiving layers in another element: recognition of the early 1600’s Native Americans who helped the settlers (invaders?) survive their first challenging years.
That’s an irony not found elsewhere. While we annually profess gratitude to those first peoples for helping our ancestors survive, we ignore the destruction of their cultural roots; death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, from disease and muskets; confiscation of Native American land ala the Trail of Tears or the Point Elliott Treaty; the slaughter of the Plains Indians main natural resource, the buffalo; and the devolution of many Native American cultures into near extinction. (If you Google “Native American movement, we’re still here” you’ll discover how First Peoples are fighting back.)
So let’s consider who’s giving thanks and for what. Thanksgiving is supposed to be an all-American holiday, but the annual celebration focuses on a singular perspective (Euro-American) rather than a historically accurate, inclusive perspective.
America was built on the bones of the first peoples and the sinew of African slaves. Unfortunately, there’s scant recognition of either for their contribution to our historic prosperity, with George H.W. Bush’s 1990 declaration of November as Native American Heritage month the exception. (Clearly, though, it can’t be much of a “holiday” as there are no giant mattress sales, deep discounts on Jeep Cherokees, white goods blowouts, TV-set discounts, or makeup markdowns.
Now before turkey growers, retailers, and Make America Greaters besiege my laptop with the electronic equivalent of pitchforks and burning torches, I am not disparaging Thanksgiving.
We had one of the best family Thanksgivings in years last Wednesday (we celebrated a day early as my oldest was on duty at his firehouse on Thursday) and there was spirited discussion about our Thanksgiving myth.
I am, however, lamenting how we either pretend things didn’t happen or write ourselves a happier history. And we see the folly of adopting alternative history and alternative facts with the consequences of our duplicity all around us.
A recent example: the attacks on those decrying the deification of the Confederate “heroes” who tried to destroy the Union. Rather than admit the historically-documented fact the war was fought to preserve slavery and Confederate soldiers were traitors, proponents of the “Lost Cause” say the fight was to preserve “states rights.” That’s partially true, they did fight to preserve the states’ rights, the states’ right to enslave other humans. Those who fought for slavery deserve no honors.
But, as in Charlottesville, the racism of the 1860s remains a fact of modern life. And the symbols of that racism, the Stars and Bars and statues of Robert E. Lee, et al, have become hurtful symbols of intolerance. That they are defended by the president, the man responsible for keeping the Union and its people one, is even more hurtful.
But the past has no lock on alternative facts. We are daily faced with misrepresentations (better known as lies) about, among other things, the Administration’s plans for health care (saying “Health care for everyone,” while taking it away from tens of millions); for reducing taxes (saying the current Republican plan is a “middle-class tax cut” when nonpartisan experts say it raises taxes for the middle class to deliver big cuts to the uber rich); and sexual predation (with the president believing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore at his word, while calling his own and Moore’s accusers liars at their word.)
What’s great about Thanksgiving is that it’s everyone’s holiday, has no ethnic or religious exclusions, and is family oriented with minimal commercial overtones. It’s as pure a holiday as there could be, if we celebrate its core values and shed the excess baggage it’s been saddled with.
For a brief moment in 1621 the new English settlers and Wampanoag people sat at a table and shared food, good will and thanksgiving. We should strive to keep that moment, however brief, alive; forego the fiction that whitewashes our past; and embrace the spirit of Lincoln’s proclamation and give, “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
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