It is Thanksgiving Day in America.
We can and must rewrite the meaning of Thanksgiving every year.
History is dynamic because we are in the middle of it.
It is a daily call to gratitude and humility.
It is also a cyclical observance in many cultures and religions for the harvest season. It is mandated in scriptures and Jewish tradition on special days and seasons.
It is not, for me, a celebration of the legacy of the Puritans who came here for their own religious freedom while denying it to others.
Nor is it, an acknowledgement for those who came before them in Virginia and dedicated a day of Thanksgiving on the shores of the James River.
Thanksgiving is not about the colonization of these territories and the false narrative of friendly relations with the people who were victims of genocide, displacement, and enslavement in the process. The indigenous nations were giving thanks regularly, ritually, and religiously with great fervor long before the English arrived in North America.
It is about parts of all these things, but less and more.
Lincoln initiated it as a regular observance for the nation.
There is something for everyone in it because we have all received much.
There is also a case for mourning and lament as well as repentance.
But the giving of thanks is always in order. It balances us with perspective. It humbles us. It regulates us. It adjusts us in thinking and behavior. It makes us better. It reminds us that we did not make the grass grow beneath our feet and did not cause the sun to shine this morning.
For the theist, it is about God as the source of all material, familial, and spiritual blessings.
For the non-theist, it is, at least, about all that nature and other people have contributed to a life of promise, hope, bounty, and joy.
For us all, it is about all of these things. it is about naming them and giving thanks for them. It is about renewing our hearts and minds in the quest of justice, truth, compassion, mercy, and generosity. It is about expanding the dream to be inclusive of all and righting the wrongs of the past.
Everyone has their own history. Until all stories are told, none is completely accurate. We gain nothing by writing history to exclude the darkness and sin. We can be grateful without being naively sentimental. We can be truthful without excluding all sentiment and nostalgia.
The words, "It was the next of times; it was thew worst of times," can be said of any generation. Let it never be said of our generation or any generation was that it was an age of ingratitude.
