Thanksgiving Needs Another Rebrand

Nostalgia is a noxious, lying tyrant. It wants us to pay reverence to a happily-ever-after, even if it really is a never-even-happened.

In the United States, we celebrate such an insidious event--Thanksgiving. Though we are lead to believe that this meal of unity is giving a nod to an event that happened around  the time of the "Pilgrims", that myth is a cover story for events much more visceral, raw, and worthy of telling.

In the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was faced with not only the division of the nation between North and South--The Yankees versus the Confederates--but it was also the time when some of the most brutal atrocities were being committed against Native Americans. Mr. Lincoln decided a way to unite the nation was to create a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863. This symbolic gesture was his way of trying to knit back together a nation frayed by slavery, socioeconomic disparities, and expansionism in the American West. We all know how "Honest Abe's" story ends, no need to repeat it here.

Later on, at the precipice of World War 2, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to make it a standardized holiday as the 4th Thursday in November in 1941. During this time the Pilgrims and Pottawatomie spin was added to the Thanksgiving story. The nation was again in need of some American optimism, and the propagandists got to work.

While, the grim details of the abuses that Natives endured at the hands of varying flavors profiles of white-supremacy is important,( and this source and this one do a much more eloquent and tactful job at it) I do think it is crucially important to question and investigate the origins of things were are told to celebrate--especially if that holiday has been commoditized or commercialized.Thanksgiving has become synonymous with gluttony, though, I do admit, being filled to the brim with turkey was one of my favorite pastimes after I overcame anorexia.

History has always been written for the victors. Even the mightiest pharaohs had their names removed posthumously by their enemies that wanted to "rewrite history". The truth is, nothing is ever black or white, this or that--it's a big ass, chaotic rainbow of perspectives, myths, spectral truths, propaganda, pageantry and outright falsities. Using discernment by way of holding multiple perspectives at once, is how we can reconcile and build better meanings.

And while deconstructing every aspect of everything is exhausting, and honestly unhealthy for most people to do, it is the duty of those of us that have the wherewithal, to do so.

I see Thanksgiving as it is -- the Great American Mashup. We have taken shiny bits of truth, mixed it generously with Uncle Sam's bloodstained, red, white and blue glitter-- and rebranded it as an atrociously positive spin on an historic event that never quite happened. While the modern meaning of Thanksgiving is more about gluttony and less about unity, I think its time for another rebrand.

If FDR and his Populist Propagandist Machine could rebrand Abe's War Hawk Thanksgiving into a tale of Pilgrims and Pottawatomie utopia, then maybe we can change Thanksgiving again.

Maybe instead of it being a holiday focused on Overindulgence, we can alter it to be one of Nourishment. Food has always been the great conciliator. 

That the past versions of Thanksgiving are just as real as they need to be, that the American Mythologies served a purpose when they needed to. But now, we need a new narrative. Let's refocus our attention on how we can heal through food, how building more sustainable and healthy food systems that serve the people is of greater importance now than it has ever been.