I've seen a few memes floating around in the past day or two asking how we can celebrate Thanksgiving when the DAPL protestors are being sprayed with fire hoses in subfreezing temperatures, and treated as rioters when they're protesting peacefully.
Honestly, I think we need Thanksgiving this year more than ever.
No, I don't buy into the story of the First Thanksgiving that I learned about in elementary school. I'm not saying that this Thanksgiving, Native Americans should "just get over it" and celebrate what they do have like the rest of us. Because that is bullshit.
But here's a small history lesson for you: Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday as we know it, celebrated on the last Thursday of November, in 1863. It was a desperate attempt to unite the nation in the middle of the Civil War. Part of his Thanksgiving proclamation read:
"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United
States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in
foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November
next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who
dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up
the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and
blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national
perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who
have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable
civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore
the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation
and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes
to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."
Notice that there isn't any garbage in there about celebrating how nice the Natives were to the Pilgrims. It's honestly mainly religious, thanking and praising God for what we have and asking him to heal the warring nation. But even if you take out the religious aspect, Lincoln's proclamation essentially says "Let us as a nation be thankful for what we have, let us be united, and let us as a nation heal from the atrocity of war."
This is what I choose to celebrate this year. A day of peace, love, and unity, as laid out by Abraham Lincoln. This is what we should all celebrate as a nation, every day of every year.
