Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. —Martin Luther

What Are You Thankful For?

words and holiday parade photos by C.A. Matthews

About this time of the year in the good ol’ USA there comes a national holiday that pretty much is celebrated by all Americans (except for Jehovah Witnesses, of course). It seems a benign enough harvest-time holiday with no overtly religious overtones, but with some covertly religious ones for those who partake. Americans of all persuasions and socio-economic backgrounds celebrate this holiday, with or without help from their local food pantry or soup kitchen.

This national holiday is called “Thanksgiving.” It was supposedly the brain child of English colonists who invited the local Native Americans over for a grand meal in thanks for the Native’s assistance they unwittingly gave their white invaders. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of the Native Americans, the English colonists would have completely died off their first winter at the Massachusetts Bay colony. Later, the Natives would come to regret their good manners when the Europeans stole their land and passed small pox on to them, but white historians conveniently leave out all those unpleasant details.

Instead, historians have chosen to emphasize the happier aspects of the Thanksgiving feast—good food, togetherness, neighborliness, and sharing leftovers with anyone who’ll take them off your hands so you’re not stuck eating turkey for the next three weeks. These aspects make it a pretty nifty national holiday to celebrate in the short, dark, and damp days of late autumn in North America—as others called “Canucks” also celebrate this harvest festival about a month earlier. (Apparently they forget the calendar includes months after October.) Thus, border families of mix American-Canadian heritage have the chance to eat two Thanksgiving dinners, with the added bonus of putting on enough blubber to survive the arctic onslaught of the coming winter.

While everyone sits around the dinner table feasting on the traditional meal of roast turkey and stuffing—which is no where close to the supposed original Thanksgiving feast of venison and seafood—guests are supposed to share what they are thankful for in their lives. This is when the problems begin.

In presidential election years, Americans with big mouths not filled with mashed potatoes and gravy might make mention of how thankful they are their favorite presidential candidate won the recent contest. Others, who are not feeling quite so happy about this outcome, will then attack the sanity of the first party and call them some rather nasty names. The atmosphere of Thanksgiving thankfulness will immediately evaporate. Thrown bread rolls and tossed turkey drumsticks can be turned into semi-lethal weapons if calmer heads don’t quickly prevail.

This is why on pain of having a pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream thrown in their face that most Americans do their best not to bring up politics at Thanksgiving. No one is more thankful than the hosts of the traditional meal that politics have been left where they belong—in the trash can out back—before entering their home. With dinner table small talk limited to sports, the latest Hollywood blockbuster, and how everyone will go about losing all the weight they’ll gain from gorging on turkey and several desserts, the day proceeds much more smoothly than things did ultimately between the Native Americans and the English colonists.

So, here it is another US presidential election year and Thanksgiving approaches. This begs the question for Americans and Non-Americans alike: What are you thankful for?

 

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