Good grief: a reimagining of holiday festivities

At the time of this writing, Thanksgiving 2021 came and went two days ago. I celebrated it with the usual rituals—turkey, football, games, pie. I wonder if you celebrated it? Actually, I don’t wonder that, I pretty much assume that you did. Celebrating Thanksgiving is ubiquitous in my little social circles. But I do wonder if anyone I know chooses to decline the holiday festivities out of respect for the cries of indigenous people who ask us to stop.

The conflict is familiar. We’ve heard it before.

The Thanksgiving holiday’s warm-toned, festive celebration of gratitude and community is accused of being a pretty facade slapped atop a far uglier truth, a truth of horrendous greed and gore.

I feel it a little deeper each year—the heaviness behind the commercialized happiness. We lean on these holidays more and more, it seems. We are desperate to celebrate each holiday earlier and earlier. Whether it’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, the “big” American holidays are often anticipated with bated breath. (I acknowledge, of course, not everyone shares this experience, but from my limited perspective of a portion of the American soup, I perceive a large number of us fall into this anticipation.)

And the hype is not just a thin-skinned fantasy, but a strong-blooded thing that nearly could be called a passion. We love these holidays. We cling to them. I think we feel we need them. They keep us going through the year; they drive us around the hamster wheel of time. Especially since Covid, of course. And I don’t think we’re fooling ourselves. It’s not just corporate entities driving us into the holidays through marketing schemes (though they certainly grease the wheels, so to speak). Rather, I think we’re collectively understanding ourselves more—we need community, we need gratitude, we need celebration and tradition, we definitely need a reprieve from work—even if it’s found in a facade.

I don’t want to take away anyone’s community, gratitude, celebration, tradition, or reprieve from work. I need these things too. But I do wonder, and will share my speculations with you, what we lose in accepting the facade, and what we might gain if we chose a different path.

As a parent, these choices weigh heavier. The little humans in my home watch my every move, sponge-brains soaking in all my glory and all my mess. They’re relentless, so I must be relentless too. I wonder if I can teach them a different way to engage with Thanksgiving. A way that holds onto gratitude while also grieving greed. A way that celebrates community while mourning tribalism. What if we spent time lamenting the bloodshed of the past before we feasted on our provisions? Gratitude and celebration are beautiful, but when they are used to gloss over the blights of our history, they become a twisted thing of vanity, do they not? Futhermore, I wonder... Can we truly feel the depths of gratitude without acknowledging the depths of the loss that paved the path to our present moment? Should we not teach ourselves and our children to call what is good, good, and what is wrong, wrong?

I wonder what it would change, if we turned this corner, took a new path? If we can acknowledge the wrongs that happened, lament and repent of them, and then, with clarity restored, take up our rejoicing gratitude, would this change the conversations at our feasting tables? Would this not open up our minds and hearts to looking past the facades in our small talk—and not just looking, but looking with compassion and justice and mercy and gratitude in our vision? It wouldn’t be a given, certainly not. We could certainly deceive ourselves, make a big show of it, and to do that would be to erect another facade—this one of constructed of pious, self-justifying righteousness via the condemnation of others. And that wouldn’t win us much.

But if we could truly learn to call what is good, good, what is wrong, wrong, and to mourn with the oppressed and take up their cry for justice... Wow, that would be something.

In my hopeful heart, I imagine a holiday season that mingles the rightful tears of sorrow alongside the rightful laughter of blessing. I want to cultivate in myself a full-bodied embrace of life—facing both the ugly, fallen things and the beautiful, glorious ones. I want to pass this along to my children. I don’t want them to have the glaze of half-hearted, commercialized, self-serving holidays over their eyes. I don’t want desserts and gifts to deaden the senses of their souls, leaving them adrift in self-focused pursuits. I want them to be clear of vision and heart. I want them to see the oppressed, the victimized, and to not turn away from their pained faces. And this responsibility weighs on me. It’s not one I can abdicate or delegate. I, and my husband, lead the way by example, whether we want to or not, for better or for worse.

Our choices are not neutral.

Perhaps you’ve read this far, but are still a bit stuck on the premise. Perhaps you, for whatever reason, don’t see the atrocities in America’s history as something you need to personally account for, repent for, etc. While I hope you’d consider closely your reasoning in this matter, considering how the Jewish people under God’s direction were called to collective declarations of repentance and lament, as well as collective rejoicing, for actions that were not the responsibility of the individuals, I will not spend further words trying to persuade you otherwise. I know this topic is intertwined with political opinions and is treacherous to untangle from them. But I will, nevertheless, encourage you to apply the same lesson beyond Thanksgiving. The moral holds true in our day-to-day lives, and I think you can join me in considering this, even if you’re opposed to adjusting your holiday practices.

You see, the cycle of life prescribed by holy Scripture is thus: confession, repentance, forgiveness/reconciliation, glorification.

In every vector of life, this simple prescription applies. In our personal relationships, our collective agreements, and in our spiritual connection to God. We must—must—learn to start with confession, to continue on to repentance, to accept forgiveness and reconciliation, and to hope for and receive glorification.

Let’s not fool ourselves into buying a glory for ourselves that skips confession and repentance. We may make our homes and dinner tables as glorious as heaven, but if we have not walked the shadowed valleys of confession and repentance, we cannot truly ascend to the heights of right living and divine beauty.

Our prize will be a false one, a facade, if we settle for the shortcut.

The glory we give ourselves will never amount to the everlasting honor our Maker would lovingly adorn us with if we’d only acknowledge our ugly, our need.

So friends, in whatever we do, let’s be full-hearted. Let’s follow the path of life. Let’s be heroic, let’s be brave and face the hard things of life. Let’s not cut corners to buy a facade of joy. Let’s not ignore the pained faces, lest we be ignored in our sorrow too. Let’s press into the divine path of life and pursue a truer reward, one that not only blesses us, but everyone around us too and even the very heart of God.

Sincerely,

HH