Growing up, Thanksgiving was always my favorite. Fall was my favorite season- the first cool chill of sweater weather and relief from the blazing heat of Florida, where I grew up. I adored the holiday art projects- the oranges,...

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always my favorite. Fall was my favorite season- the first cool chill of sweater weather and relief from the blazing heat of Florida, where I grew up. I adored the holiday art projects- the oranges, reds, and browns, the headdress feathers we’d color, cut and paste so we could dress up like Indian Princesses. I liked the Thanksgiving plays, where we’d reenact the feast shared by happy Pilgrims and welcoming Native Americans. I loved the turkeys and all the turkey soup, turkey-cranberry stuffing sandwiches, and turkey divan leftovers that followed. Unlike Christmas and Easter, which meant lots of boring church services, Thanksgiving was all about food, family, and being grateful, which felt good. My family mostly got along, so I have lots of fond family memories about Thanksgiving.

And then I learned the truth…and figured out we’d all been lied to by revisionist historians. And then I felt guilty about loving Thanksgiving.

Because I’m living half-time in Cape Cod and half-time in the San Francisco Bay Area these days, I had hoped to spend this Thursday in Plymouth, standing in solidarity with the Native Americans honoring a national day of mourning. Since 1970, Indigenous people and their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, just above Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. For the Native people, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the hostile takeover, theft, and occupation of Native lands, and the erasure of Native cultures. Those who stand to honor the National Day of Mourning recognize the resilience of the Native People, honor their culture and spirituality, and protest the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.

But because of an unexpected funeral and turn of events, I’m now in Columbus, Ohio with my family instead, preparing to celebrate a traditional colonizer’s Thanksgiving, with mixed feelings of gratitude for my family and the happiness of bringing my partner Jeff to meet them all for the first time and also regret that I’m not in Plymouth. Those mixed feelings are reminding me of so many paradoxes that our post-2020 world is requiring us to hold. The comfort of our black and white belief systems, our illusion of certainty about our personal and collective histories, our tolerance and even justification of so many egregious injustices in the world that privilege some and deprive others, as if some people matter more and others matter less.

The turkey is thawing and the cornbread is drying out for stuffing while we prepare to participate in a national charade- only now, the charade is busted and with eyes wide open, there’s now a bittersweet quality to the sweetness of connection with my family and the cognitive dissonance of pretending to celebrate something that can only be mourned.

I wish we could move Thanksgiving- keep the turkeys, keep the excuse to focus on what we’re grateful for, keep the reason for flying in from all over the country to be together, and give up the charade and the story behind why we gather. But if I refused to participate in the charade, my protest would go largely unnoticed. I would be missing out on a family ritual- and it really wouldn’t help the Indigenous people one bit.

But I figure at least I can speak here about the torn feelings inside. I can honor the Wampanoag people and the Nauset people who were the original inhabitants of the town I just moved to in the Cape. I can honor the Iroquois and Algonquians, who were the original land inhabitants of Ohio, where I’m writing this. I can honor the Meewok people who once lived on the land of my home in California. And I can verbalize the land acknowledgment of these people before we sit down for our holiday feast and enjoy the green bean casserole and cranberry sauce.

Some people I know feel angry when I talk about things like this. They think we shouldn’t let culture wars take away our American traditions or taint our happy memories. They want to pretend to still be blissfully ignorant about the real American history and keep their patriotic viewpoints unchallenged.

But I don’t agree with ostriching our painful past as a nation.

This weekend, before flying to Ohio, Jeff and I spent two days at Harper’s Ferry National Park in West Virginia, where the borders of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia intersect at the crossing of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. We went there on purpose, to stand at the site of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the National Armory, which began the Civil War. Jeff’s family is full of Trump-voting fundamentalist white nationalists and my family is full of social justice activist ministers. Jeff has jumped ship from his family’s point of view, realizing that if the Civil War were happening right now, he’d be a Yankee and his family would be Confederates. He’s spent his whole life trying to reconcile the divide, to find a way to unify, to avoid making one side wrong and the other side right.

But as we prepare for turkey day, he and I realize there’s really no way to reconcile those opposite points of view that are still polarizing in our country today. There’s only one right side of history here- the side that fights for equal human rights for all and the side that is doubling down on white supremacy, who believe white colonizers are superior to the Native Americans they slaughtered and stole land from and the Black Africans they enslaved for their own personal profit. The modern day Abolitionists are still fighting for justice for all Americans, and the modern day Confederates are still trying their damnedest to make sure that equal rights for all men, women, and children never happens.

On our way to Reagan International Airport, we stopped at the Lincoln Memorial and read the Gettysburg Address on the wall, as we felt our shameful American history course through our veins alongside the idealistic vision that shaped our nation. Then the cognitive dissonance sets in again. We are an entitled nation built upon white supremacy, Indigenous genocide and land theft, colonization and oppression, and the brutal enslavement of Black humans. We are also a nation that had a good idea- that all men are created equal.

Our nation keeps pushing the edge of that good idea- to explore whether we as a nation can ever agree upon creating a nation where all men, women, and children, all races, nationalities and cultures, all gender identities and sexual preferences, all able-bodied or disabled humans, all religious affiliations and beliefs, all neurotypical or neurodiverse people, all powerful or powerless people, and all short, tall, beautiful, or less stereotypical Barbie and Ken humans are created equal- or not.

Harvard physician Paul Farmer said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” Jeff and I both stand by that quote. The idea that white colonizers ever thought we were entitled to kill and steal from the Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny and then rewrite history to pretend the Native Americans thought it was something to celebrate is total bullshit. The idea that white plantation owners felt entitled to dislocate and enslave Black Africans and somehow justify it in the name of religion is nausea-inducing to ponder. The idea many people in my own country still firmly hold that twists their minds into believing that a small percentage of mostly white, cis, hetero, property-owning, Christian men (and women) have the right to withhold human rights- BIPOC rights, women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, religious freedom rights, all the rights- from anyone they deem “less than” is threatening to destroy democracy in our country.

The fact that we’re still fighting over this fundamental difference in our country makes it hard to pretend to feel grateful for the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock this year. It’s hard not to get swallowed up in shame over the sins of my ancestors, and it’s also hard to turn my back on the traditions of my family, my race, and my culture without feeling a grave sense of loss.

And so I prepare to gather with my BIPOC sister and my queer daughter in the kitchen of my brother’s house to prepare a feast. My nephew is playing the piano as my aunt and uncle are catching up with my sister-in-law in the other room. My partner Jeff is having coffee with his white nationalist brother, trying to find a way to connect hearts with someone so different from the rest of my family, while it pours rain outside, knocking the last of the yellow leaves off the trees. Joy and melancholy ride shotgun inside of me, and I’m just going to let that be okay.

I hope you’re all riding the waves of whatever is arising in you during these distressing times in our world. And I hope, wherever you are, there is love, family, grace, open-heartedness, music, good food, and permission to feel whatever you’re feeling, without needing to pretend anything that isn’t your reality.

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