Happy Franksgiving

Thanksgiving began as the American version of the harvest festival.  It featured food native to this place: turkey, potatoes, corn, cranberries, etc.  It was also introduced by pious ideologues and racists, and that strain of it continued past the obliteration of Native American societies that first harvested those foods.

Then there was the bizarre 1930s version of Red v. Blue, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November instead of the traditional last Thursday, which that year (as this year) was the fifth Thursday.  Many Republicans refused to celebrate this holiday then, calling it Franksgiving.  

These days there are many variations in menu and activities, which now often include football and searching on the Internet for bargain gadgets.  It also begins the holiday season when families measure themselves against the ideal--in this case, Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving paintings--and find that there are at least as many angry words, sulks, disappointments, bewilderments and tears as radiant smiles and gratitude.

The gratitude behind it all originally was for nature's bounty, or at least the subsistence nature provided.  Beginning with those first ideologues in New England and Virginia,  Americans' relationship to nature however has been more hostile than grateful.  Settlers and their descendants have been busy ruining the land and waters and even the air for several centuries, and we are close to finishing the job.  But maybe we can acknowledge this with a little grace as we're saying grace, and try to do better.  The natural world is the source of life, including our big and dubious brains.  The rest of nature would be grateful if we'd start using them wisely.