The Truth about Thanksgiving

And How Christians can Reinvent It

This really is the most wonderful time of the year. I don’t agree with all of the commercialism around this time of year, but nevertheless, I cannot help but smile at the cute Christmas commercials, and there is just a joyful spirit in the air as people anticipate cooking turkey, baking pies and spending time with family. I especially love Christmas music. I am one of the few people who is thrilled to turn on the radio November 1 and hear Christmas music, possibly because I sing in choir where we start rehearsing Christmas songs in October so I am just in the spirit. Speaking of which, after Thanksgiving, I am going to start a five-week series, that I think will be titled Let Every Heart Sing, where I am going to reflect on five of my favorite Christmas songs and how they capture the true meaning of Christmas. But first, I want to talk about Thanksgiving.

I love Thanksgiving, which I think of as the lower-key cousin to Christmas. There are no demands as far as decorating or gifts, and our culture has not burdened it with weird sentimental expectations of perfection. Thanksgiving is simply about cooking and relaxing with family in a spirit of gratitude for our many blessings.

Thanksgiving is not technically a religious holiday, but since we as Christians believe that all of our blessings come from God, and since the Bible commands us to express gratitude (Colossians 3:15-17), you could say it is a quasi-religious holiday. But given the mission of this blog, which is to rescue Christians from the corrupting influence of Christian nationalism, I feel obligated to serve up a small helping of painful truth about the white supremacist and Christian Nationalist origins of Thanksgiving.

The story that we were all taught in school was that the tradition we now call Thanksgiving originated with the pilgrims, who came to America on the Mayflower in 1621 to escape religious persecution in England. The pilgrims were not prepared for the harsh climate in this new world. The seeds they brought from England failed, and many did not survive that first winter. But the friendly Wampanoag Indians taught the pilgrims how to survive in their new land. Those hearty pilgrims that survived that first winter had a celebratory feast, which we commemorate today on Thanksgiving. But what is left out of this story is that the years that followed that first Thanksgiving would be defined by a barbaric pattern of genocide to open up land for white settlement. In 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop, proclaimed a “Thanksgiving” for the massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indians, and ultimately between 95 and 99 percent of indigenous people would be killed, with the rest forced to assimilate into the dominant white society, or left to die on reservations. For this reason, while most of the country is joyful on Thanksgiving, many indigenous people consider it a day of mourning. Every Thanksgiving since 1970, the United American Indians of New England and allies of the cause have gathered on Cole’s Hill above Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to honor indigenous ancestors and Native resilience, and to protest the racism and oppression indigenous people worldwide still face today.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin believes that a true sign of moral progress in this country would be the replacement of our Thanksgiving traditions with a national day of atonement and collective fasting, but acknowledges the impossibility of implementing such a radical change.

Jane Kamensky, a Harvard history professor points out that holidays like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day have been less about who we were at a particular time in history, but a battle for who we aspire to be in an ever-changing present. Thanksgiving for example, was not observed annually until the late 17^th century and was a strictly local commemoration until 1777, when the 2^nd Continental Congress proclaimed a National Forefathers Day to celebrate the arrival of the first English settlers to the new world, for the political purpose of creating a shared origin story to unite the young nation. It would be reinvented again by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, who dedicated Thanksgiving to all the American people so they might “give thanks with one heart and one voice” which even then was more of an aspiration than the current reality as the Civil War was still raging. Jane Kamensky also insinuates that history is complex, and thus the temptation to simplify it with myths is a temptation that appeals to all cultures. “In place of one origin myth, the inventors of Indigenous People’s Day and the National Day of Mourning invoke another. One in which all Europeans were villains and all Natives victims. One in which indigenous peoples knew neither strife nor war until the treachery of Columbus and his cultural heirs taught them to hate and fear.” This is true. No culture in human history has a clean record, free of strife and bloodshed, but the truth that we are all sinners should not be read as justification for, or minimization of our own sins. I remember my Grandma, a devout Catholic, telling me as a child that we will all be held individually accountable for our sins. When we get to the gates of Heaven and say, “so-and-so did worse,” God might say, “I’ll get to him, but right now, I’m not interested in him. I’m interested in you.”

Perhaps it is time to reinvent Thanksgiving again, especially given the resurgence of Christian Nationalism, fueled by politicians who seek to teach only the glorious parts of our history. While it is true that not all Europeans were villains, even in the 17^th century, the literal and cultural genocide of native Americans is certainly not a “myth” in the fictional sense of the word. According to Billy Michael Honor, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in College Park, Georgia, this reinvention does not necessarily require us giving up our dearly held Thanksgiving traditions, but those of us who are privileged should expand our view of the holiday “so that it becomes an opportunity to both give praise to God for our blessings and to give service to those in need,” acknowledging that while we in our privilege identify with the Pilgrims, praising God for our material blessings, there are poor, oppressed and socially marginalized people in society who identify more closely with the social inequality and misery experienced by the native Americans of the 17^th century. Perhaps when we gather around the table to pray before diving into our Thanksgiving dinner, we should thank God for all of our blessings, while also acknowledging the undeserved grace he has shown us, blessing us in spite of the egregious conduct of some of our forebearers, not because their occupation of this land was divinely ordained. We should confess that we are not a benevolent empire, just another of the many empires of human history where a few lived privileged lives while killing or exploiting others. And while few of us will attain the power necessary to fundamentally change the system, we should seek small, practical ways in which we can do our part to follow Christ by reaching out to the poor, oppressed and marginalized of society. This could mean standing in solidarity with indigenous people where you live if you hear about a protest to stop an oil pipeline or something that will harm sacred indigenous land, volunteering at a food pantry or homeless shelter, or donating generously to a toy drive or food pantry. In the words of a pastor at our church this past Sunday, the best way to show gratitude for our blessings (and I would add, make Christianity attractive to a hurting world again) is to combine Thanksgiving with Thanks-living.