Gratitude is Real. Fable is Still Fable. Truth is Love. Set the Table.
ULTIMATELY, who benefits from these well-practiced fables? Who makes gain from the false lessons instilled? Who are the myths of Thanksgiving designed to benefit? What are the truths they are meant to obscure?
THIS VIDEO of children reenacting Thanksgiving is pretty funny. And reminds me of early quandaries I found myself in while playing “Cowboy and Indians.”
Thanksgiving. As I wrote last year, it is a holiday that is split, in my own mind and being. Of course I remember and cherish all the times various parts of my family came together on this day and ate, drank, and recounted family stories, looked at old photos, laughed, and got full on delicious food. But like many of our holidays, the truth (the blood) has been wiped clean from this glossy card (only $2.99!) and in its place raised a cluster of days upon which we shop, spend money, send cards, and often, if that’s all—forego a chance to learn lessons from the world’s past.
I don’t want anyone to stop enjoying themselves on any day of their life. I heartily cheer on one more day where people can gather, share love, share food and drink and laughter. In that sense, I’m quite the Tolkienite. Though some choose to fast, which I respect as a means of mourning lost opportunities to connect, and lost lives, and lost culture.
We know the results of forgetting important lessons and replacing them with feel-good fable. I think I cannot improve on last year’s words:
Thanksgiving is the earliest fable given to us along the path of mental indoctrination that allows the USA to continue its method. Some say now a great change has come upon us and we may have to shift the way we do things. Global powers now, no sole hyperpower, diminished American might, changing demographics. We’ll see. …
Nonetheless, the path is in place and it is a path that begins with commercially-crafted tales designed to distract us from the USA’s long-running methodologies of exceptionalism and crusade and in place of that, offer us patriotic pablum; saccharine feelgood fakery that suffocates entire peoples and their struggles. Ultimately, who benefits from these fables and the lessons they instill? Who benefits from the invasion of Iraq? From the mercenary armies we have there and are now launching into many nations and onto ocean vessels? From our military bases that multiply like virus? Who are the myths of Thanksgiving designed to benefit? What are the truths they are meant to obscure?
All that said, I wish you and yours another day of life, and joy, and a billion magnificent sensations. Including a full belly and a full heart. Today, tomorrow, and every day.
–
PS: the art used on the front page for this post uses Diego Rivera’s The Market of Tlatelolco from The Great Tenochtitlan.
Tags: Bird, Children, Conquest, Holidays, humor, Imperialism, Indigenous, reenactment, Thanksgiving, Truth
Posted in Borders, Featured, Filmmaking/Video, Media, Messaging, The Long War on the Indigenous
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favourite holidays, but not because I bought the fable, but because I liked the concept of giving thanks, or a day just to think about what we are grateful for. I liked the fact that it was a big holiday where we got off school, but it was still relaxed, not as hectic as Christmas…and of course THE FOOD, Thanksgiving dinner has always been one of my favourite meals. I love it so much that I have even fantasized about opening a restaurant called “The Thanksgiving House” where that is all that is on the menu
It is not a holiday that the Mexican side of my family often made a big deal out of, but a day usually spent at my maternal grandmother’s house, with various family members from that side of my family dropping by to stay awhile, chat, have a slice of pumpkin or pecan pie and inevitably wind up telling family stories that I enjoyed listening in on.
As I got older, and more aware of some of the controversy surrounding the holiday, I had to question whether or not I wanted to continue this tradition. I decided that all the above was enough reason to do so, and I justified this by adding the concept that Thanksgiving, at its heart, is an Autumn harvest festival, which surely, all of our ancestors in agricultural societies would have celebrated some form of. .
Having said all that, this year I am not celebrating Thanksgiving. This has happened to me a few times since living in the UK. It creeps up on me over here, with no reminders, it often falls during a busy time…and this year, I was meant to be doing a barbacoa turkey in my Tio Ricardo’s back yard in San Antonio, but we had to cancel our trip to the States this month due to illness. Anyway, because we are unique, in that we are living in the United Kingdom, and most of the time, I do make Thanksgiving dinner, my son does not get any sort of indoctrination at school, the explanation of the holiday is entirely down to me. He is only 6 1/2, so I have always just explained it to him as an Autumn festival where people give thanks for the harvest and everything else in their lives…I tell him that most of the dishes are based on foods that are native to the Americas, like corn, pumpkin and cranberries. This is easy for him to see because these foods are rare and hard to find here for the meal. In the last year, he has started to ask questions about WW2, the concept of slavery and how European settlers got to America. I talk to him in simple terms and try to not give him stuff that’s too emotionally heavy for him to handle at this age, but I know a serious conversation about genocide is right around the corner…
Thanks for your experience, Arban.
I agree…in stages. When they are ready for it. I think children need to realistically see the world, but we don’t want to instill harm, fear, trauma, or things they are not able to mentally integrate.
And like I said, I’m always down with festivities and love and food. To me, that’s much of what being alive is about.
Thanks again for speaking about what this day has mean to you and how you approach it.