At its core, it’s not a terrible holiday. I mean, it’s kind of hard to get fractious about a day seemingly devoted to being grateful for what you have and what you’ve been given, for your family and friends, et-sentimental-cetera. It’s a reminder to live in the moment, to appreciate everything, no matter how small.
Okay. I can get behind that.
You want to know what I can’t get behind? The reason we ended up with this holiday in the first place.
It is my personal and deeply-held belief that human beings are a blight, and should be eradicated. We’re awful. We are the reason we can’t have nice things. Someone over in the Old Country decided to be a dick about someone else’s way of life, so the persons on the receiving end of the dickage decided to get out of Dodge. Then they found somewhere new, which was already quite happily populated with its own people, and everyone was nice for a while because the newbies were still reeling from the dickage they had fled. But human beings forget things. The further removed we are from a tragedy, the less we remember how much it sucked. So after a while, the people who had run away from being oppressed became the oppressors.
Fast-forward through land disputes, that debacle with the purchase of the island of Manhattan, smallpox blankets, all-out wild west warfare, the Trail of Tears, and reservations, and what you’ve got is a marginalized society which was doing beautifully before you got here, thanks very much, and should have been left alone to continue to do so. But no, someone got a God complex, and here we are.
Also, that ‘pilgrims and Indians’ nonsense the U.S. public school system shoves down our throats? LIES. UNTRUTHS. FABRICATIONS. PROPAGANDA. COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT OF THE HIGHEST DEGREE. Sean Sherman has something to say about it. (Shout-out to my editor for this insightful article.)
I really do hate my humanity sometimes. Properly hate it. I mean, we’re awful, aren’t we? We turn on each other at the drop of a hat, and for the most ridiculous reasons. Though if you think about it, those reasons really boil down to ‘you don’t fit into my normal and are therefore not to be tolerated’.
“But think of all the good things humanity has done!”
Okay, fine, we’ve done some neat stuff, but I’m pretty sure none of it was necessary. If you ask me, existence isn’t necessary, but since it happens, we find ways to fill it--and create our own problems by doing so.
What is even the point.
The complete lack of a point is (albeit humorously) summed up nicely in this little exchange from Black Books:
Manny: I want the weekend off. I want a life!
Bernard: This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!
Manny: We have needs! Fran wants to learn the piano, I want some time to myself, you want to go out with a girl--
Bernard: Don't make me laugh bitterly. Fran will fail, you'll toil your life away, and I'll die alone, upside down on the floor of a pub toilet.
Let’s circle back around to ‘a nice holiday about appreciating things’ and look at another way humanity has managed to make a complete mockery of something. I would like to draw your attention to Exhibit A:
Black. Fucking. Friday.
“Let’s use a day we’ve dedicated to being grateful to overeat, shout at our relatives, and then go shopping!”
Black Friday used to start at 7:00 AM the day after the Thanksgiving holiday. Just about everyone was able to be with their families and enjoy the day (massive tip of the hat here to all emergency service personnel who are always on duty no matter what--I appreciate you), and then they got up early the next morning to get a few things at half price or whatever.
These days I don’t think the stores even actually close on the holiday. Corporate greed has outweighed human decency (what little there was of that to begin with). Consumer culture has created a monster--one that needs to be fed on the latest and greatest at the lowest possible prices, no matter the cost to anyone or anything else. People get trampled at Wal-Mart, for fuck’s sake. Is there really anything so compelling to obtain that it makes it worth the possibility of grievous bodily harm? I find it all very baffling, not to mention disgusting.
The origin of the Thanksgiving holiday is tainted with the blood of innocents, and the secondary ‘just be grateful’ nonsense we’ve attached to it has long since gone by the wayside. We might as well just cancel it.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea.
Thanksgiving is cancelled, everyone! You couldn’t treat it with respect, so now no one gets to have it. I hope you’re happy.
What? Were you expecting bubbling positivity from me today? That’s cute.
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