Let's all Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is unique to our American culture and by law we are mandated to celebrate the third Thursday every November. Whether we cook at home or go out to eat, most of us have an opportunity to enjoy our family and friends around a communal goal: to thank those who came before us who made great sacrifices.

Personally, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Considering that this may be my last one if the lymphoma does return, I am embracing it even more this year. Although challenging, my wish is that our small family gathering at my home will be relaxed and not full of angst. Writing this blog post helps to put all those feelings into perspective.

While I love the concept of Thanksgiving and have pride for my country, I also acknowledge that our country ravaged our Indigenous Peoples, the American Indians, and took over their land, colonizing from coast to coast with the grand idea of a manifest destiny.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times by Peter C. Mancall, Mellon Professor of the Humanities at USC, discusses in depth the origins of Thanksgiving and white intruders who continued to massacre Indians, even sending some back to the Caribbean as slaves. In the 1820s and 1830s, a Pequot minister named William Apess took aim at the colonists’ goal of Indian removal. His pleas have been forgotten and replaced with a sanitized version of harmony and gratitude that we call “Thanksgiving.” Professor Mancall concludes in his article that rather than overstuff ourselves with our meal and continue our romantic notions that Pilgrims and Indians got along famously, we need to retell the real history of our country.

A few days prior to the publication of the LA Times article, former actor Michael J. Fox was interviewed on television to help promote his latest book, No Time Like The Future” He was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s Disease in 1991. So much of what he says resonates with how I’ve approached my lymphoma for the last five years. He said “With gratitude, optimism is sustainable”. If he can find one thing to be grateful for, although he is physically and mentally suffering, he can change the outlook of a situation.

We can have gratitude and understand that Pilgrims and subsequent colonists killed innocent people who lived here before us. Let’s acknowledge that the Indians paid a higher price.

Ironically, though, what we built was a place that no matter your color, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, we can fulfill our dreams and be protected by freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

Human beings are capable of evil and creators of goodness. For one Thanksgiving day, let’s acknowledge our imperfections and strive for continued communal bonds.

Our lives depend on it.

All the veins in this leaf take a circuitous and complex route to connect to the main artery.