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?
To discover more you can be thankful for, please read the rest of this article by clicking on this Substack link: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com There
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