Cynical old me used to think Thanksgiving was something to do with Americans celebrating their escape from the Brits. It turns out the first national celebration of Turkey Day actually occurred in 1777 after the war of independence, so perhaps I was half right. Cruising around the local cornucopia in a warehouse otherwise known as Albertsons, I started wondering just how many turkeys are culled each Thanksgiving - and then each Christmas. I haven't yet found that figure, but believe it or not the US Census Bureau does issue a Thanksgiving bulletin which states the US raised 263 million turkeys in 2003 with a net weight of 7.3 billion pounds. Holy smokes that's a lot of big bird. There was 658 million pounds of cranberries produced to go with that (okay, so obviously a lot of it turns into juice not jelly or sauce).
Seriously though, while celebrating family, friendships and food on the table is a fine thing, as national holidays go this is another one steeped in irony. Its right up there with Columbus Day as things we shouldn't be celebrating at least with the current name. Yeah, I'm a kill joy - but I have worked for enough companies who are enlightened enough to have a Holiday Party instead of a Christmas Party so why not a Friendship Day or a Community Day?
Its time we recognized that happy tales of the original Thanksgiving are quite a long way from the truth, and that quaint old dinner party in the past was just the start of the rape of the commons and genocide of the commoners already in North America. Following in the footsteps of Columbus the Calvinist Puritans wasted no time in instituting a scalp bounty for their former table guests. If I was an ancestor of those indigenous people I can't imagine how I would feel about Thanksgiving and continued teaching at school of the rose tinted tales of harmony that accompany it. Here is an essay on the subject written by just such an ancestor.
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