I kind of hate Thanksgiving.  I do love my family, the festivities, watching the Detroit Lions, the parade.  I especially love the food.  Oh, I love the food.  For the longest time, my favorite food in the whole world was stuffing.  It still comes close.  No, the reason I hate Thanksgiving is the holiday’s origin.

The roots of Thanksgiving, as this great post about “The Real Story of Thanksgiving” describes, involves being thankful for life in the midst of murder.  Being thankful for being on the side of invaders, conquerors, and murderers.  One thing for which I truly am thankful was a friend I made with another volunteer advocate from Negaunee, Michigan back when I was in college.  He is Native American and told me that for his people, Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday of celebrating thankfulness, but a reminder of ruthlessness and racial animus.

Now, as a Christian and a father, I struggle with doing something we are always called to do: being thankful: while that invocation comes from such a horrible place: genocide.

Many people have reminded me that I should keep my mind trained on the present and to be mindful of my faith, family, and friends.  That we have much to be ever thankful for.  And that is true.  Many more tell me that we should reclaim the holiday to be about family and fellowship: that these are what we can be thankful for today.  I do honor that view as well.  However, It isn’t enough.

The thanks we give today must be mindful of the arrogance and evil that coincide with personal gain.  The thankfulness of those early Americans was built on the backs of tortured native people, suffering invasion.  Like a transplant patient, we must be willing to confront the truth that our own lives bear the scars of another’s death.  Even if that death came from someone else’s hand.  And to bear witness to it means we have to own up to two things: that for which we are so deeply thankful and that for which we bear deep responsibility.

I am not thankful for genocide and I refuse to celebrate only half-holidays and reclaimed versions of a day for which our postmodern sensibility can’t be thankful.

I am going to eat a whole lot of food.  I am going to wish everyone a great holiday.  And I am going to encourage everyone to do more than remember the past.  We need to acknowledge our genocidal path, repent, and change our future.  That’s my Thanksgiving tradition.

© 2011 Drew Downs.  All rights reserved

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• Thanksgiving: On A Heavier Note (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)