The concept of “thanksgiving” is probably millennia old. Its origins lie in the gathering of the harvest, and the festival thanking the Gods for a plentiful year and the safety of family. Feasts, sacrifices, and prayers all feature. As Jung would say, this is part of our collective gestalt, as examples of these festivals occurred worldwide without “outside influence” by another culture. And so it still is almost everywhere else in the world. Heck, even Tolkien has a version of Thanksgiving.
But leave it to us to take a good concept and ruin it with made up lies and myths, all for the sake of White Supremacy.
Here at Top Comments we welcome longtime as well as brand new Daily Kos readers to join us at 10pm Eastern. We strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
Lemme ‘splain. While “days of thanksgiving” (outside of the harvest celebrations) have been declared for momentous events—a Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed in the Colonies in 1623 to celebrate the end of a drought, for instance—they usually featured prayer and even fasting. So what the heck happened? How did that one feast involving the Wapanoag and the English become the central myth of the day?
For quite a long time, English people had been celebrating Thanksgivings that didn’t involve feasting—they involved fasting and prayer and supplication to God. In 1769, a group of pilgrim descendants who lived in Plymouth felt like their cultural authority was slipping away as New England became less relevant within the colonies and the early republic, and wanted to boost tourism. So, they started to plant the seeds of this idea that the pilgrims were the fathers of America.
What really made it the story is that a publication mentioning that dinner published by the Rev. Alexander Young included a footnote that said, “This was the first Thanksgiving, the great festival of New England.” People picked up on this footnote. The idea became pretty widely accepted, and Abraham Lincoln declared it a holiday during the Civil War to foster unity.
It gained purchase in the late 19th century, when there was an enormous amount of anxiety and agitation over immigration. The white Protestant stock of the United Stateswas widely unhappy about the influx of European Catholics and Jews, and wanted to assert its cultural authority over these newcomers. How better to do that than to create this national founding myth around the Pilgrims and the Indians inviting them to take over the land?
This mythmaking was also impacted by the racial politics of the late 19th century. The Indian Wars were coming to a close and that was an opportune time to have Indians included in a national founding myth. You couldn’t have done that when people were reading newspaper accounts on a regular basis of atrocious violence between white Americans and Native people in the West. What’s more, during Reconstruction, that Thanksgiving myth allowed New Englanders to create this idea that bloodless colonialism in their region was the origin of the country, having nothing to do with the Indian Wars and slavery. Americans could feel good about their colonial past without having to confront the really dark characteristics of it.
But can the myth be removed from the holiday? Can a national day of thanksgiving be only just that? Immeasurable damage has been done by the “First Thanksgiving” myth. Whole cultures have been obliterated. Descendants have to keep enduring reminders of atrocities. Simply ignoring it won’t make it go away. The myth and the event that was mythologized must be fully decoupled from the Idea of what “thanksgiving” has been and will continue to be.
And that’s my hope. That our holiday of Thanksgiving becomes just that. A day in which we only celebrate a fruitful year with the people we love and give thanks for all our blessings. And I leave you with MY thanks, as posted on social media:
What can I say. I can talk about my kids, my job, the wonderful thing we're building at HAPA, my new theater fam, my old Apollo and Windiana fam, my DKos/TC fam, but what am I MOST thankful for? The weekly call with the siblings. Because of Quarantine, we started having a weekly call. And in these past two+ years we have become closer than ever. Thanks to all my "fams" for keeping me alive for another year.
And that’s not hyperbole. It’s because of ALL my “fams” who know me, love me, see ,me, and are there for me that I am literally still alive. But that’s a whole other diary.
Suffice it to say I’m thankful for ALL the love sent my way from everyone who sends it.
And now on to Tops!
TOP COMMENTS
Brillig's ObDisclaimer: The decision to publish each nomination lies with the evening's Diarist and/or Comment Formatter. My evenings at the helm, I try reeeeallllyy hard to publish everything without regard to content. I really do, even when I disagree personally with any given nomination. "TopCommentness" lies in the eyes of the nominator and of you, the reader - I leave the decision to you. I do not publish self-nominations (ie your own comments) and if I ruled the world, we'd all build community, supporting and uplifting instead of tearing our fellow Kossacks down. Please remember that comment inclusion in Top Comments does not constitute support or endorsement by diarist, formatter, Top Comments writers or DailyKos. Questions, complaints or comments? Contact brillig.
As of this writing, there are no Top Comment submissions
TOP MOJO
Top Mojo for yesterday (Sunday), [insert the date here], first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
TOP PICTURES
Top Pictures for yesterday (Sunday), [insert the date here]. Click any picture to be taken to the full comment or picture. Thank you to the wonderful dKos staff who made it possible to continue this feature in memory of jotter!
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |