No Thanksgiving For Me

What exactly is the reason I have to celebrate Thanksgiving? I have sat and pondered that question for years now. I do love to visit with family and just have a family reunion of sort. Yet how do my ancestors who come from African and Native tribes think of this holiday? I understand that people will undoubtedly see this as un-American and un-patriotic or whatever else they can attach an UN to.

Even as a child I wondered why we celebrated this holiday. I wondered this because I lived in the Northwest which has Native American symbols everywhere, from totem poles to long houses down at the Pacific Ocean. Yet, there never seemed to be any Native American’s around. Now I loved the food and the fun, but Thanksgiving was the beginning of the end for the Native people. Think about that, as we sit and celebrate sloth, greed, envy, lust, pride, gluttony, vanity and anger; seven deadly sins according to the Catholics or Christians who are more than likely the main ones celebrating this disgusting tradition.

All for what, a new tribe hit the shores of America which of course had no name since the natives at that time had no concept of ownership. So this new tribe came to “America” looking to escape the tyranny of their home land and was also woefully unprepared to survive this first winter in the new land and had to get the help of the natives. Now if the natives had just left well enough alone they would have died and they would not have lost their land. Yet, being the civilized of the two, they did help and provided them with food and knowledge of farming this much different land. Helped with trade and scouting out the land etc. Yet what did the new tribe do for them? They decided that these people who had helped them and gave of themselves so willingly were savages and unworthy of the right to have this land or just live period.

The next years were probably hell for the natives as the white man tribe set about making sure they took each and every square inch of the land these people lived on and all their resources. The more of them that came the more land and resources they took from the natives. The white man even used germ warfare which gave the natives diseases unknown to this continent and the people, all for greed and some sense of superiority. Yet here we all are celebrating the beginning of the end of a once great people. I guess it is fitting since the people who are writing the history books are the ones who committed the heinous acts and the ones who decided that we should be celebrating it.

I know that people are saying right now that if what happened between the Native Americans and the white pilgrims had not happened that this wouldn’t be the America we all know today. And that would be a bad thing how? I know that my words will be misconstrued into words of hate for whites or hate for America but they aren’t. They are just words of a person who does not fully believe that we should be celebrating the death and destruction of a group of people purely for the greed and superiority of another. I am just refusing to participate or allow my children to participate in such a macabre celebration. I don’t in any way want to end the celebrating of others because that is their right to celebrate any and everything they would want. I am just interested in my family, my ancestors and how we perceive this supposed holiday.

To most it makes no difference, yet if they were to bring a homeless person in for the holidays, clean him up then feed him and then after dinner he decides that you are all unworthy savages and kills you, no one would want to celebrate that day as a great day you were so helpful. But, we all want to do so for the Native Americans. We should all be shamed to do so. So I will again agree to call this day nothing more than the day in which my family decides to get together and visit and eat. Even though to me this is still celebrating a day that deserves no such celebration, just by going through the motions of visiting family I am acquiescing to this gruesome of celebrations.