A Dead Serious Thanksgiving

It’s so easy to forget one of the very best parts of Thanksgiving. I’m usually much too fat, full, drunk and asleep to remember much about anything during the last week of November. The annual complaints about the moral value of the Thanksgiving holiday have to be just about the funniest thing perpetrated this week. It’s not the complaint itself, allow an explanation.

In no nation other than America could anyone involuntarily be so ironic. Allow me to make a sweeping generalization, the people typically complaining about the moral value behind a holiday that has basically become an excuse for gluttony and football (two activities I can get behind), are usually the farthest from being able to relate to any subjugated culture or people.

Social media has put a face to your aimless internet complaints and I’ve never witnessed anything so painfully humorous in my life. This comes to you straight from the facebook profile of a young, white woman with a bachelor’s degree in caring:

“On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader, the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer, the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of imperialism’s zero-sum murderous game. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds of ...thanks?”

Clearly, someone is on a diet for thanksgiving.

It’s easy to bring up the complaint that biased parties have written the history books and we actually didn’t make friends with the American Indians, jerk each other off with gravy and share partners in an orgiastic demonstration of unity that would live on forever and ever, but if Thanksgiving is what prompts you sticking it to the man by making a scathing post on your facebook page directed at absolutely no one, then immediately leaving to go eat a turkey at grandma’s, then I hope grandma chokes on a wishbone mid-dinner and dies instantly after a botched Heimlich attempt from cousin Huey while the kids are watching so you could possibly make a legitimate complaint about not enjoying the holiday next year.

This completely uninvolved sentiment brought to you by the longest run-on sentence I’ve ever written in my life.

Before spewing forth angry diatribes about just how steaming angry you are over any oppressive holiday or tradition, you should ask yourself a few questions:

1) Has this tradition/activity not transcended its original meaning and become something completely different?

2) Do I actually plan on taking any action to affect this issue?

3) Am I white?

4) Is this in any way directly affecting me or anyone I’m involved with?

5) Did I have to take the bus to the public library and wait an hour to get on a public computer to write this?

6) Is this sentiment going to motivate any sort of change in the minds/attitudes of the public at large?

7) Am I white?

Should I post the answer key? I’ll give you a hint; if you answered “no” to every question except, “Am I white?” then you really don’t have much to complain about. If I were you, I’d eat a bit more than usual, give grandma a hug, be happy for not having it too bad and shut the ever-loving fuck up while you’re at it. There are much more important issues to be concerned with, oh, motivator of the people.