Dear Sue,
It's been about six weeks since
my last letter to you
and I was sadly surprised that so much time had passed.
Your most recent letter to me
got me thinking about my own Thanksgiving memories/traditions and so I want to
thank you for the opportunity to blog on them.
My memories and traditions circle almost exclusively around the
non-historical aspects of the day. For me, it's about a big multi-course meal
(many hours long) with a large loud multi-generational Italian-American family
that's happy to be in each other's company on a chilly late November
Thursday.
The day begins watching a parade and ends watching
football.
Of course, I am not unaware of the
historical myths
surrounding the meaning of the day. But like
Columbus Day, Thanksgiving sits at an intersection of a number of different (some
overlapping, some discrete) narratives. We can't erase the sins of the past,
that's for sure, and the dissonance at the core of the American Experience is
the result of how we want (or perhaps need) to perceive our collective past
grinding against the painful realities of that past.
In an early
draft of that Columbus Day blog post, I was edging towards the question of
"Why was it necessary to cleanse Columbus in the first place?" I think we can
ask the same question of Thanksgiving as each is part of the prelude to the
story of America.
If we've settled on the idea that "we" are the
good guys (for example, look at Reagan's "The Shining City On The Hill" - a
metaphor that has it's own Thanksgiving connections), then every decision made
to solidify that idea has to have been the right one to make. History and
facts then have to be twisted around so the myth In order to hold the myth
true. We're civilized.
They're savages!
I remember a "Thanksgiving" episode
of Buffy The Vampire Slayer a few decades ago that touched on this. While I
don't recall all the details of the plot, Spike, the bleached vampire, sliced
through the similar discussion of the legacy of Thanksgiving with, if memory
serves, a cynical, "You're a conquering people. It's what you do."
If we were to simply accept that human beings across the globe have done
some awful things to other human beings for millennia (and then subsequently
retro-fit any number of mythologies in order to justify those actions) the
dissonance would dissolve. It wouldn't absolve us of our moral
responsibilities of course, as we'd still have to make right what we did, but at least we'd have
jettisoned our collective hypocrisies. I'm not sure how to do any of that,
however.
But back to my own traditions. For the past decade or so,
the lovely wife (and I keep her anonymous at her request) and I have driven
the 8 hours eastward to my relatives on Long Island. The mini-vacation usually breaks down
into two visits; the multi-course multi-generational meal at my Aunt's house
(antipasti, pasta, turkey, coffee and dessert - takes about 5 hours total),
then a weekend stay with my cousin (my aunt's daughter) who lives on the east
side of Manhattan.
On The Island we walk. For three days. East side, west side, all around the
town (although there's no gathering of wood for bows). There's usually a trip
to Rockefeller Center to see the skating rink. Saks (right across 5th Avenue)
has a holiday light show that's really wonderful to see. There's usually also
multiple trips to Veniero's on E 11th for kawfee and Italian pastry. The lovely wife usually goes for sfogliatella whereas I'm more partial to cannoli.
The highlight for the last few years (for me, at least) is when I got to do this:
Real bagels every morning, exercising my 1st Amendment rights protesting our would be tyrant, and reconnecting with my family. That's been Thanksgiving for me for the last few years.
Lotsa awful stuff to contemplate, lotsa stuff to be thankful for.
With respect,
David