Perplex-Giving

Thanksgiving.

A Holiday drenched in

memory and nostalgia.

I’m never really sure if

I like it or not.

Its History and tone

confuse me.

As a child we’re told that

it celebrated the survival of

the Pilgrims with the aid

of the Native Americans.

It was mildly celebrated,

on and off over the years,

Thomas Jefferson wanted nothing

to do with it and didn’t

celebrate it at all.

As we got older, we learned

Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving

a National holiday during the

American Civil War in 1863 to help

bring about some hopeful peace.

It has been observed since then. (More or less.)

Yet, I’m perplexed by it. I always

have been. It is a strange story of

two peoples, getting along through

tough and changing times, only to

eventually have one people practically

wipe the other out.

It is a holiday confusingly doused in

blood and dirt, wiped off, shined up,

and put on a display shelf, but still

infected with an odious, dubious,

past.

Here we are again, faced with a Holiday,

a Holiday season in general, tinged with

sadness, horrors and a sense of casual unease

with the state of the world, our nation

and in some instances, with each other.  

I don’t honestly recall a recent

Holiday Season that wasn’t touched

by some unrelenting grief. I can’t really

remember the simplicity of childhood

wonderment at the feasts, laughter and

obviously, wine induced euphoria of the Holiday.

I’m deeply saddened by the roughness of

this holiday, the coarseness of which we have

to carry on through it, pretend to see the

laughter in each other’s eyes but commonly

disavow the depression present there too.

We will feast in the face of famine,

we will drink in the face of sobriety,

we will fight in the face of reason,

we will ignore in the face of horrors,

we will laze in the face of hardships.

What are we?

Are we celebrating the work of

Colonial Entrepreneurship?

Are we ignoring the past and future

to revel in the present while simultaneously

ignoring it?

I’m quite perplexed by this holiday.

I’m very confused by us.

I’m not sure about it at all.

Perhaps, in the gathering of family,

friends and loved ones (maybe not so loved)

we can start to clear up some of this confusion,

to wipe away the muck of history and re-classify

this Holiday as one in which we can be proud of.

A holiday celebrating our humanness, our

universality, the fact that we’re not so different,

from one another, that violence is not an answer,

that hate has no place, that an open mind is

one of the most beautiful human traits we have.

Maybe that’s the solution to my confusion,

perhaps over cranberries and mashed potatoes,

we can try to heal each other, really see each other,

all of us, together and maybe; that is something

to be Thankful for.