Another Thanksgiving, Taken Personally

So now we in the United States end another Thanksgiving weekend, in the odd way we have recently evolved for doing this. 

First of all, Thanksgiving itself has a convoluted history.  We’re taught that it all goes back to the Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts in the early 1600s, how they gathered with the natives to give thanks for the food they all had (some Virginians claim the first event of this nature actually happened at Jamestown some years ahead of the event at Plymouth).  Later, of course, the European colonists expanded west decimating the native peoples and cultures.  

The official national celebration, however, originated with Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of the great Civil War battle of Gettysburg, which cost so many lives, halted the Confederate invasion of the north, and inspired Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Thanksgiving Day did not achieve a settled date until the twentieth century.

In the course of the twentieth century, the day’s celebrations came to include college football games and parades with huge floats in several east coast cities.

In recent years, commercial interests have caught up with Thanksgiving.  The day after Thanksgiving, “Black Friday,” is the traditional start of the Christmas Shopping Season.  This is when retailers are desperate to make lots of sales, because so much of their success and survival depends upon sales during the Christmas season.

For me—a Unitarian Pagan—it is difficult to associate with the Pilgrims (although Unitarians do have a connection to those Massachusetts Puritans, and I am thankful for what I have).  My focus is not on shopping.  Even if I may give or receive presents at Christmas time, it is not my priority (although I very much value my time with friends and family at this time of year).

On top of that (and this may seem trivial to some of you), I don’t particularly like turkey!  I don’t care that much for potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauces—all those traditional foods that Americans feel they “must” eat at Thanksgiving.

Indeed, my entire connection to these traditions is a bit conflicted—I’ll be talking about this more by and by.  Even on Veterans Day, and Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July, I feel a little different than most Americans.

I grew up among the military, but not military.  I grew up a civilian among the military (my father worked for the American Red Cross, with the military).  I didn’t live in one settled place until I was twenty-six.  When I entered the College of William and Mary, as a Junior, at age twenty, I had lived on U. S. military bases for a total of ten years—half my life.  An additional two years, I had lived just a few blocks outside an Air Force Base.  Twelve years connected with the military by the time I was twenty!  And of that, five years I lived outside the U.S.

This is just one factor that colors my attitudes towards Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving.  I can’t give a vanilla American perspective on Thanksgiving.  I do know that many people share my misgivings about “Black Friday” and even football.  But I can only speak for myself, out of my own rather unusual perspective.  More of this, perhaps, to come.