Minilogue - November 2005
The Thanksgiving Story: Questions to Ponder
By the Rev. Bruce Johnson
Thanksgiving has become a domesticated holiday, bearing about as much resemblance to the original observance as a docile, farm-raised turkey does to its wild forest ancestor. We tend to look upon the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag counterparts as characters in a familiar but fantastic fairy tale, rather than as wholly human actors in a historical drama which includes us in its sweep, even today.
It is easy to identify and criticize the limitations and failures of those who gathered to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in New England; not so easy to see ourselves as heirs of their stories and their struggles.
The focus of Thanksgiving in contemporary society seems to be largely on kinship and family, and there is certainly something to be said for that. The annual Turkey Day feast is one of the few chances many people have to re-connect with and celebrate a larger-than-nuclear family. But even an extended family is still a family, and we also need myths and rituals that help us to transcend and transform our limited loyalties of kinship, clan, and tribe.
The Thanksgiving story, like the biblical Exodus narrative upon which it is based, is a cultural myth -- A story about what happens all the time, told as if it happened once upon a time. Myths invite us to identify with the deep and sacred patterns of life, as revealed in the actions of our archetypal ancestors. The “psychic distance” between those mythic patterns and our mundane existence gives us the space and freedom to imagine living differently.
Call me a party-pooper, but I sometimes wish that the conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table turned toward the kinds of “mythic” questions opened up by this foundational story. Imagine asking -- as you pass the gravy or the candied yams - questions such as these:
How did your ancestors come to this country? What stories do you know about their pilgrimage? Where do you see or experience oppression and bondage in our world today? What kind of exodus do you see, or can you imagine?
Someone has suggested that, to complement the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast of our country, there ought to be a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. What responsibilities do you feel as a citizen of this country? How do you balance liberty and responsibility in your life?
How would you tell the Thanksgiving story from the perspective of a Native American? How willing are you to own the unspoken shadow of this story, and of all stories?
Perhaps these questions seem too serious or too heavy for what is, after all, a celebration. But I suspect that many people have a hunger to break through the superficial crust of sentimentality that surrounds Thanksgiving. Like the parched kernels of corn that sustained the Pilgrims through a harsh winter, the seeds of truth contained in myth may nourish us through the diffcult seasons of our lives. I’m thankful for that.