my childhood perspective on thanksgiving
my msn name is my rant about today...but i just read nathan's mini-rant so i figured i'd post too.
in my mind the modern thanksgiving is like yom kippur except with too much food rather than none. and i know really it's more like sukkot, but bare with me. you do something that you really should be doing every day (one is appreciating what you have and the other is recognizing what you've done wrong, but i choose to define 'wrong' in my own way instead of as 'sin'). this is a child's connection, because even when i was little i didn't understand having either day. i guess it's the required reason to see family and go to synagogue that most people also won't do on a regular basis even though they should (if it means so much and all).
since i learned the story of thanksgiving (what you're supposed to be thankful for), it struck me as a 'white' holiday. white, that is, defined in the pre-post-modern sort of way, where immigrants who had white skin still weren't white until they spoke English and assimilated, and people who were not-white could never be white but could progress up a sliding scale, so white clearly meant something different than merely skin colour until people became confused because they had privellege from skin colour but not a history of privellege. anyway, the point is that it is a white holiday. or seemed to be. i guess now looking back it does have religious connotations, because part of the so-called backing of colonialization was civilization based on christian ideals. still, something is off there. because it wasn't really a christian person that, say, a person from china or india would recognize, who would slaughter millions on behalf of the religion. so, i always wondered why non-white people celebrated it? it seems like a slap in one's own face, in a way, as it is a demonstration of white superiority that also colonized and oppressed other parts of the world (rarely to the same degree, though).
i like nathan's idea that you can be mindful and thankful. just because people should recognize what they have every day doesn't mean that they shouldn't also do that today. but turkey dinners don't ask the greater questions about why we have what we have while others do not. like, you know, those nations that were killed off? or in a modern context...if it is a religious thing then now there christianity is practiced around the world, and there are christians who are suffering while non-christians live in relative contentment...if god is so wonderful, i'm guessing it's not because s/he thought that we (christians and non-christians) are special and they (christians and non-christians) deserve to suffer. but i guess that's another rant...and me dreading a certain moment at lunch this afternoon.
yet the day off school today is useful. essay writing here i come!
(this post is so predictable)
in my mind the modern thanksgiving is like yom kippur except with too much food rather than none. and i know really it's more like sukkot, but bare with me. you do something that you really should be doing every day (one is appreciating what you have and the other is recognizing what you've done wrong, but i choose to define 'wrong' in my own way instead of as 'sin'). this is a child's connection, because even when i was little i didn't understand having either day. i guess it's the required reason to see family and go to synagogue that most people also won't do on a regular basis even though they should (if it means so much and all).
since i learned the story of thanksgiving (what you're supposed to be thankful for), it struck me as a 'white' holiday. white, that is, defined in the pre-post-modern sort of way, where immigrants who had white skin still weren't white until they spoke English and assimilated, and people who were not-white could never be white but could progress up a sliding scale, so white clearly meant something different than merely skin colour until people became confused because they had privellege from skin colour but not a history of privellege. anyway, the point is that it is a white holiday. or seemed to be. i guess now looking back it does have religious connotations, because part of the so-called backing of colonialization was civilization based on christian ideals. still, something is off there. because it wasn't really a christian person that, say, a person from china or india would recognize, who would slaughter millions on behalf of the religion. so, i always wondered why non-white people celebrated it? it seems like a slap in one's own face, in a way, as it is a demonstration of white superiority that also colonized and oppressed other parts of the world (rarely to the same degree, though).
i like nathan's idea that you can be mindful and thankful. just because people should recognize what they have every day doesn't mean that they shouldn't also do that today. but turkey dinners don't ask the greater questions about why we have what we have while others do not. like, you know, those nations that were killed off? or in a modern context...if it is a religious thing then now there christianity is practiced around the world, and there are christians who are suffering while non-christians live in relative contentment...if god is so wonderful, i'm guessing it's not because s/he thought that we (christians and non-christians) are special and they (christians and non-christians) deserve to suffer. but i guess that's another rant...and me dreading a certain moment at lunch this afternoon.
yet the day off school today is useful. essay writing here i come!
(this post is so predictable)