(Thanksgiving 2012 - Like clockwork, last night's Rachel Maddow Show featured Rachel giving a long list of Things She Was "Sincerely" Thankful For, and it brought my mind back to this post, which seems to be my Thanksgiving staple; "Being Thankful" just grates on me, as an American pastime, because it tends to reinforce our upperclasses worst impulses towards self-satisfaction and celebrations of personal privilege. Or so I find. I'm not quite as bitter as I was when I first wrote this - or even two years ago, when I reposted it - but in general I still believe we'd be better off, as a nation, with less "thanks" and more "give". Especially, for me, at a time, when so many people, so close to my home, are still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy. I hope you get to spend the kind of day I get to have, with family and friends and great food. And yes, gratitude for all we have. And maybe we can resolve to keep trying to do better, and give more. More tomorrow.
As I was preparing for Thanksgiving 2010, I noticed a new round of Twitter "I'm so thankful" topics, and immediately thought of this post, which I put together for Thanksgiving 2009. I also caught a wearying, drippy segment by Chris Hayes of The Nation, filling in for Rachel Maddow, full of self-satisified glibness - "thanks for the little bell that tells me to put on my seatbelt." What's remarkable to me is not that I still have the opinion expressed below, but how much of the description of the world we're still in - economically, socially - still holds. It's not, just, that we should think more about what we give than what we get... it's the idea that we should question this notion that we deserve all of what we're given. And I think the spirit of Thanksgiving is more than that - not the things we get for ourselves, but the gifts we are able to share with everyone. We owe such a debt to th people who came to this land and survived, and thrived, in the conditions we would never live through ourselves. And we avoid suffering when so many others do. Have a great day. More posting tomorrow.)
This Thanksgiving seems to have unleashed a particularly strong strain of sincere, slightly maudlin sentiments along the lines of "what I'm thankful for" meant, I think, to be a reminder that we have, you know, so much to hang onto in these tough times. You know... let's be thankful for family, our health, our great golden retriever, Barky... and on and on.
All due respect to Mom and Apple Pie, but I think no one should be allowed to get off so easy.
As nice as it is to step back and take a moment to be grateful for, you know, all we have, it's also, you know, not really what Thanksgiving is, as a national holiday. Thanksgiving is, really, a story of survival, about being thankful not for our individual good fortune, but for the power of a community to hang together through incredible adversity and manage something quite so basic as to live and see another year.
It's the kind of desperation that makes stuff like being thankful for that new Kindle we just got (Karen Tumulty, via twitter) seem a bit, well, shallow.
I don't want to seem sour or (too) churlish, but I feel like as a nation we really need to be shaken out of especially self interested, self satisfied complacencies just now. More than ever, it seems, we need a reminder that this isn't about just us, or our immediate circles of friends and family. And part of that, I think, is someone saying, enough with the "thanks for all I still have." Try and think about the people who don't.
This year, more people are unemployed than in the past 25 years (among black men, unemployment is the worst since the Great Depression). People are still losing their homes, their jobs, wondering how they will put food on the table and care for their kids. We are losing more people in Afghanistan than ever, with the likelihood of sending yet more troops there. This isn't about you, or me, or all that we have.
It's insidious, the way we have moved from seeing something as simple as a day to be reminded of the struggle that came with settling in a new land has become an easy, self-satisfied moment of personal gratification. So much of what we have lost - our sense of community, our sense of valuing not what we have, but what we give away to others - hasn't been taken from us... it's been set aside, made easy by celebrating ourselves first, and worrying about others less. And less. And less.
Today, my boss will spend her day working in a soup kitchen giving food to others, as she has for many years. I am humbled by the simplicity of the act, by the fact that she does it, by herself, just because she feels she should. It is the highlight of her day. Her act reminds me that I don't do nearly enough, and makes me wonder why I don't do more.
And yes, today I will be grateful to spend time with my nephews, to be with my family, to share in a wonderful meal. I'm thankful that we have survived another year, and have the chance to go on, and do more. But this isn't a day for cheap, easy sentiment; or to just eat without abandon. We've survived... but we won't survive a whole lot longer if we don't figure out how to think less about ourselves, think more about others, and do something for people who need help. Those are the values, and the America, I'd like to be thankful for. And proud of. And we're so not there... no thanks to me. Or to us.
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