Rev. Joseph Boyd
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. The reasons for this are as particular and complicated as the history of peoples in this country. I was born a Jehovah’s Witness, and every time the teacher in school would discuss the pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, my parents asked that I be excused to go to the library. They found the lesson religiously inappropriate. My parents told me as a kid that those stories were lies encouraged to build up a sense of nationalism, a sense that we deserved what we have as a country. And it covered up our sins as a nation in that process. So it was religiously inappropriate. I reflect all these years later that in essence I agree with my parents. Those stories are religiously inappropriate. They’re full of hubris, lies, false narratives in order to give a false sense of unity. You might be wondering at this point: Why is this my favorite holiday? I’ll get to that in a little bit.

First I want to say Thanksgiving is the American holiday. It points to our strangeness, our complexity, our disappointments, our history, and a certain sweetness. George Washington was the first president to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, and it had nothing to do with the Mayflower or anything like that. It was a holiday of Thanksgiving to God for granting the United State victory over the British. The third president, Thomas Jefferson, was a deist with Unitarian sympathies, and didn’t believe God worked that way – intervening to give one people victory over another. So Jefferson rescinded the holiday, and said nobody in the United States should ever celebrate Thanksgiving. It is based on lies. Then the following president said in essence: Jefferson is too Unitarian, and God does indeed favor the United States, so everyone go back to celebrating it. You can see a pattern developing, can’t you. For most of the history of this country, the Southern United States saw Thanksgiving as a Yankee holiday, something they wanted nothing to do with.

Especially during Reconstruction, after the Civil War, southern states in protest would not celebrate Thanksgiving. There are recorded fights between Southerners and Northerners during this time, when a Northerner would glibly say “Have a Happy Thanksgiving.” Some historians argue that the only reason Thanksgiving eventually was accepted by the South, is because a tradition began where major college football teams would play during the holiday. And the Southerners couldn’t resist football. So they eased their way into it. In modern history, FDR moved Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November at the request of the president of the board of Macy’s and other major business owners who wished to encourage Christmas shopping as early as possible following the Great Depression. I found a website that tried to explain Thanksgiving to those who are not Americans, and it startled me how odd we are, especially for someone looking at us from the outside. There were a couple simple and great lines on the website. It said: Most Americans will eat more on Thanksgiving than on any other day in the entire year. Another one which I loved for its brevity: Thanksgiving meals tend to be shorter in duration when family members have political differences.

So even among White people, Thanksgiving is a strange holiday with a complex history. But probably when someone mentions the controversy over Thanksgiving, what most people think about is the colonial history with Indigenous tribes: the brutality, stealing, and cruelty of the Pilgrims and other settlers. There is something I learned about this year which I didn’t know before. Some of you know there is a National Day of Mourning that takes place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, hosted by the Wampanoag and other peoples across the U.S. in support of Indigenous sovereignty and land protection. But I didn’t know the origin of this event until this year.

The origin was in 1970, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower, and they invited Frank “Wamsutta” James as leader of the Wampanoag tribe to give a speech. The representatives: Congressman and other politicians demanded to see a copy of the speech before James gave it. In the speech, Frank “Wamsutta” James not once praised the pilgrims, and instead talked about the legacy of this false narrative, this damaging narrative on his people’s health and well-being. A PR person had a freak out moment after reading the speech, and wrote an alternative speech, which emphasized the false narrative, how the Pilgrims showed generosity to the Wampanoag. A heroic false narrative. Frank “Wamsutta” James understandably refused to give that written speech, and out of that came the National Day of Mourning in protest, held in Plymouth at the very site of the Mayflower landing. I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if they would have not only allowed but welcomed Frank “Wamsutta” James’ speech. What if all these politicians and leaders had the courage to embrace a more complicated, painful, and true narrative? What if they would have shown gratitude to James instead of fear? I wonder that. It’s the same burning question we have today.

Can we be honest and be grateful? I think we are still stuck in this country thinking that we have to choose one or the other. We think we have to choose a very narrow and shallow way of living life. Either we can be grateful, and that means that we have to distance ourselves from feeling and really taking in anything that’s complicated, unpleasant, and contradictory to a happy narrative. Or the other extreme. We can be honest, we can look at this current and present history, but then how can we be grateful? We will have to be cynical, hardened, and angry all the time. As Americans we often treat our history like a game of hot potato. Did you ever play that game as a kid? We too often treat history like a game of hot potato: “Ah, get it away from me. You deal it. No, you deal with it.” But I think in time if we’re fortunate, we find a community like this. We’re not perfect, far from it. But we have some tools. And eventually we learn to invest in a good pair of gloves, so we can hold this history, this hot potato, without harming ourselves and without harming others. We can learn the peace of not having to run away from who we are and where we came from, and our vision can expand.

I really love Joy Harjo’s poem, “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” She richly and beautifully explores another question, which is our question this Thanksgiving: if the world is ending, how will you respond? When the world we know ends, and another one is on the horizon, how will we respond? In this time still in the throes of a pandemic that is changing how we relate to each other in profound ways, in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse verdict, in a time when many of us are just hanging on by a thread of sanity, how will we respond? There was a project led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, asking individuals from different tribes across the United States whether they celebrated Thanksgiving. The responses to this question were incredibly diverse. Some understandably said they don’t celebrate this holiday. And some said they did, and they said why. A couple of those responses resonated with me personally. They said that they celebrate Thanksgiving, because they are still here, and that is worth being grateful for. It has nothing to do with Pilgrims, nothing to do with White people. It’s about their life, their families’ life, and gratitude they made it through another season, sometimes against the odds.

That is why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I’m still here. You’re still here. Sometimes against the odds. The world is still here, for now. And that is worth sitting down and honoring, being grateful for. And I love the food. Perhaps the world is ending, perhaps we are living through some kind of impending apocalypse or perhaps it is a rebirth. If so, I want to be there for that last sweet bite.  Not in a greedy, fearful or anxious way. I want to hold the complexity and truths of this moment, and in holding them I pray for transformation: I want to hold it so I can be transformed. I want to be made into a real person, someone who can welcome all of life, including its sweetness. Especially its sweetness. I want to be a person who can be honest and be grateful. I’m grateful for all of you. I’m grateful you’re still here. For all those who are Indigenous to this country, I’m grateful you’re still here, especially in the context of this pandemic. Let us focus on that this year, and may we have a new Thanksgiving.