Klarinet Archive - Posting 000729.txt from 2004/11
From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Happy Thanksgiving
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:29:39 -0500
Answering a question about what Americans give thanks for on Thanksgiving
Day, Karin Berman wrote,
>>maybe for managing to wipe out almost all the
>>Native People, taking their land? Then went home
>>after it all to celebrate with some dead turkey ???
Here in Virginia, where the earliest colonists pre-dated the Pilgrims and
were a lot more cruel and exploitative than the Pilgrims, I serve our
traditional dead Virginia ham instead of a dead turkey. However, there's
no need to serve any meat dish at all. One of the best Thanksgiving
dinners I ever attended was a fine, nutritionally balanced vegan potluck
feast made up entirely of traditional Thanksgiving harvest foods: apples,
cranberries, nuts, bread, rice, beans, broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes,
pumpkin and squash, with the eighteenth century additions of pineapple,
tomatoes and oranges joining the older favorites.
Ormond Montoya wrote,
>I've tried to avoid being a grump, and I've tried to
>hold my tongue, but perhaps it's better to talk it out.....
Same here. I interpreted the original question, as you did, as innocent
curiosity. Then came the snarky responses, and then the extra-snarkies,
and away we go. I've been trying to re-write this response but then not
sending it every day because it seems so unnecessary to explain this
holiday to most of us, and so futile to try to explain it to people
evidently eager to seize on nearly any national observance as another
excuse to bash the USA. I'm happy to bash the USA when I think we deserve
bashing (for re-electing Dumbya and for our invasion of Iraq, for
instance), but people who figure out ways to bash Thanksgiving seem
mean-spirited to me, and they seem to miss the whole point of the holiday
as it's celebrated today.
Thanksgiving has evolved beyond the superficial (and mostly fictional)
storybook tale about the Pilgrims, who were not typical early colonists.
Most people in the USA today either don't have any Pilgrim ancestors, or
the Pilgrim blood is thoroughly diluted. Today, the only religions here
that resemble Puritanism are tiny minorities. (There are more than 2,000
religions and denominations in the USA.) For all most of us truly
understand of the Puritans, they might as well be Martians. Therefore the
holiday has changed, and is celebrated by many citizens who are not only
non-Puritans but non-Christians, including many who follow no religion at
all, because taking a day to reflect on humility and gratitude seems like a
good idea on its own merits.
Traditionally celebrated quietly among families and close friends,
Thanksgiving is a personal observance, when most of us are either hosts or
guests in private homes. The big meal can get excessive, gluttonous, but
it's founded on the ancient custom of sharing our food (taking food from
ourselves and giving it to others) as a way of showing love. Another of
the customs today is to phone close family members who can't be present.
Still another is to give to charity and to help prepare food for the needy.
What we're especially thankful for, in any given year, depends on our own
circumstances. The fact that the public has vigorously resisted efforts to
commercialize Thanksgiving gives me hope for this country.
Now, then, how many of you think that your ancestors were nobler than the
looting, murdering, pillaging colonial invaders who founded the USA? Do
any of you come from a culture with no history of warmongering, slave
owning, religious persecution or political and social corruption? Were all
of your ancestors saints? I think not. Presumably when you give thanks,
you don't venerate the thieves and the murderers hanging from your family
trees. Nor do I. Yet we're all the descendants of those who survived
times even less civilized than our own. We've all got ancestors who
behaved like killer apes when it was expedient (or even just when it was
convenient). Maybe we'd rather gloss over what they did to survive (and/or
how they pretended that they did what they did because they had to do it to
survive...); but when people truly celebrate Thanksgiving Day instead of
just going through the motions, this holiday at its best means we do
reflect on the past, both good and bad.
We think about where we've been and where we're going. We humble
ourselves, honor something better, give thanks for something better, try to
do better, and consider how we can grow into better human beings. Naturally
we don't all come to the same conclusions. I suppose that this holiday may
be about jingoism to some people, and to other people, maybe it's only
about how many dead animals they can eat. To still others, maybe it's
about, "My god's bigger'n your god, / My god's bigger'n yours. / My god's
bigger cuz mine eats Ken'L Ration...."
Lelia Loban
Q: How do you know when there's a flute player at your door?
A: The doorbell speeds up.
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