Jennifer Horgan: Thanksgiving: It's not easy to find a balance between morality and joy

This time round, I’m wearing stretchy pants.

In so many ways this celebration of Thanksgiving is representative of our age. It’s meant to be a nice and pleasurable thing, but it’s really hard to feel good about it when you know the broader context.

It’s a lovely idea to sit and give thanks and that’s how I view it. I’m certainly not going to bring up the plight of indigenous people at my neighbours' house.

Unless I’m invited into a debate. Then, I’m all in, but there is a time and a place for everything, and I put being kind above being right.

In case you don’t know already, the holiday dates back to 1621, when the Plymouth colonists from England, and the Native American Wampanoag people, shared an autumn harvest feast.

The depiction of the dinner is very sunny in traditional American textbooks, not dissimilar to my neighbourhood gathering (so long as I behave myself). It is presented to American children as a harmonious interaction between people from different cultures.

What most people don’t realise is that it didn’t become an official national day of celebration until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln established it as a national holiday.

But people will know something about the controversy around the holiday. The first point of contention exists between Europeans. The Spanish believe that a very similar event predates the arrival of the English. In 1565, explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé apparently met with members of the local Timucua tribe to dinner in St Augustine, Florida.

But far more significant is the belief that the sunny depiction of the original event does an unforgivable disservice to indigenous people. Thanksgiving, many will argue, masks the true history of bloodshed that underpins the relationship between European settlers and Native Americans.

Indeed, since 1970, protesters have gathered on the fourth Thursday of November at the top of Cole’s Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock; this gathering marks a National Day of Mourning and similar events are held throughout the United States.

A different history

These people commemorate a very different history wherein one oppressed people, the passengers of the Mayflower — the half of them that made it, that is — went on to oppress and brutalise another people.

And yet even this depiction of the pilgrims is problematic. Some suggest the people aboard the ship, battling scurvy and sea sickness, were an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith in a “New World”.

Sociologist James W Loewen says it was less about religious freedom, which could have been found in Holland at the time, and far more about establishing a theocracy.

If we go with the first interpretation and believe the Europeans travelled to escape persecution, the parallels to what is happening today seem obvious. It should seem more obvious to all of us that trauma, be it individual, familial, or collective, is cyclical, and that far more needs to be done to acknowledge its impact.

Others push against the very essence of Thanksgiving. According to a New York Times article, “a prevalent opposing viewpoint is that the first Thanksgiving stemmed from the massacre of Pequot people in 1637, a culmination of the Pequot War”. James W Loewen, cited in the same article, believes that the original dinner probably was a pleasant harmonious celebration but that the subsequent bloodshed throws dark and lasting shadows.

I am lucky to work with an American who is also coming to my neighbours' celebration. I asked her how she felt about celebrating something so murky. Her response, in my eyes at least, is perfect.

“I will go to Thanksgiving dinner,” she said. “I will celebrate my friends and the importance of community. I will give thanks for all that I have and show gratitude. But I will also share resources about indigenous people at work.

I will use it as an opportunity to acknowledge that we are often not who we say or maybe believe ourselves to be.”

Then she quoted F Scott Fitzgerald, that wonderful, wonderful quotation:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

I think this sentiment is more important for us now than ever before, because we know so much, feel so much, all of the time.

Guilt at a time of pain

We live in a world where many people feel it is genuinely hard to enjoy anything without feeling guilt because we carry the pain of thousands.

But don’t we have a duty to carry on and celebrate the positives? It’s okay to smile even when you know what’s happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan. It can be hard, but it’s okay. 

It’s okay to feel uncomfortable and still enjoy something. We are not perfect and the world is less so, but we are all worthy of pleasure and happiness within reason. We just need to check in every so often so that we do not lose sight of the bigger context altogether.

And I know there are people who go through the world without a thought to any of the world’s crises. I know them. Those people who can shop ‘til they drop, guzzle petrol before they walk to the shop, or jump on a plane every other week. God, in a way I envy them. I don’t judge them because what good does it do?

I miss unbridled pleasure. There are so many example today of pleasures we’ve lost. 

I know I sound privileged and I recognise it, but I used to adore pottering around shops for hours. I shop in charity shops now to achieve some equilibrium.

I bagged myself a beautiful new coat in Oxfam yesterday. It’s a Carolyn Donnelly navy woollen knee-length beauty. It was €45 but — notice the but — the money goes towards the Gaza appeal. This is an achievement in terms of the equilibrium I want to strike between morality and joy, but it’s not always so easy to find.

I am looking forward to my Thanksgiving dinner. I will do exactly as my work colleague suggests. I will head into town and buy Killers of the Flower Moon today.

The book, set in 1920s Oklahoma, focuses on the murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation when oil is discovered on native land. I will educate myself, tell people about it, only if they’re interested, and pay my respects.

And then I will raise a glass with friends.