I maintain a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving.
Like anyone else, I enjoy the break from working, the chance to spend time with my family and the opportunity to share and fellowship over fried turkey and fixin's. Our family traditions include everything from an annual turkey trot to a video game tournament-this year featuring "Guitar Hero" on Wii-as well as sharing all of the memories, laughter and love you can imagine.
But something about the commercialism, overindulgence and emphasis less on Thursday dinner and more on Black Friday's shopping opportunities point to the glaring inconsistencies surrounding our supposed national day of thanks. What is it about our world, our lives and our status that we have to set aside a day to consider and express our gratitude? And how exactly do we display said thanks? By continuing to overindulge ourselves without considering how much we have to be thankful for day in and day out?
Thanksgiving has become an excuse for some in our society to happily disregard the implications of our lives of luxury. For others, it remains a reminder of the tragic wounds that necessitated our American rise to power-er, um, that is, "freedom."
Allow me to be blunt. I will never be able to give uncritical thanks for the founding of this country. Not as a woman of black and Native American heritage. My family is all too aware of the glorified pleasantries of Plymouth Rock mythology. The third-grade plays about happy pilgrims feasting with Squanto do not exactly do requisite justice to the story of European colonization of the New-to-them World. As a country, we still have not given due reparation-reservations don't make the cut-to those who are most authentically American.
It is also pretty unreasonable to expect black folks in the South to represent the premises of Thanksgiving to the fullest, either. Not without the memory of hundreds of years spent in slavery, reconstruction and fights for civil rights. Being thankful for survival in spite of the government, institutions and proud supremacists is not something that can be relegated to an official day off from work. Nor is it, despite our familial variation on a theme, what the instantiated holiday intended.
For my family and the myriad families who share these perspectives of the story, many do still gather together to celebrate the blessings we continually received. However, our celebration is also met with a sense of mourning and memorial, a reminder of accomplishments past and the work of change still lying ahead for the future.
As such, instead of just offering thanks for all of the things we have and do not need, all of the food we prepare and do not eat, all of the family we have but only fight with, I ask that we all consider taking a moment to reflect on how to best give thanks by reassessing our ignorant compliance in an ahistorical myth. Here follow some prayers, if you will:
In the midst of our celebration of harvest and abundance, and in light of the historical truths of power and dominance, may we be tempered by seeing starving children, whether in East Africa or East Durham, who will not be fed on this day or many other days throughout the year.
As we are surrounded by families and loved ones, let us lift up those who do not have anyone near, whose families have been ravaged by bombs, guns and evidences of war, many of whom have suffered as innocent casualties.
As we prepare to shop for a consumer-driven Christmas season, let us reflect on the envy and greed that drives the finances of our economy, and pray for ourselves to be rid of the materialism that requires sweatshop economies and children's labor around the world.
As we play pilgrim and feast on turkey this holiday, let us remember those who still are not met with respect, equity and opportunity in this country and around the world.
It is hard not to play into the patriotic protocol of a seemingly narcissistic annual ritual when it is so deeply ingrained in our cultural being. But being thankful for privileges that come at the hegemonic cost of others is not something to celebrate, or give thanks for.
Amey Adkins is a graduate student in the Divinity School. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
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