Gratitude & Thanks-Taking Day

Woundedness, The Wampanoag people, and Some Real Turkeys

EDIT:

Eugene Cho on Thanksgiving and genocide

AND

I will be honest; I did not want to have to post this on my favorite holiday, you know, because of all the turkey and stuffing those many of us who are fortunate get to enjoy. Recently, I have tried to be more thankful to God and for friends in the midst of economic uncertainty. I know that a lot of Christians will be posting on Thanksgiving, asking their fellow members in the body of Christ to give thanks for what we have, and that’s fine. What is, however, the appropriate manner in which one gives thanks unto God, particularly in the Christian religion? Is the appropriate way to give thanks to God for God’s goodness to simply say a prayer and then let’s eat?

It would be hypocritical of me if I condemn Christopher Columbus Day year after year, and yet remained silent during Thanksgiving. And so I’d like to think of Thanks-Taking Day this to reflect on our national gratitude not as a response to what we may consider to be providence for the pilgrims, but rather a more Christian idea for what thankfulness should look like. I think it is important to understand that the notion of thankfulness in the New Testament is rarely ever separated from the memory of Jesus’ death on the cross. In a similar manner, thanksgiving and memory in the Hebrew Bible are linked primarily to YHWH’s enduring love and faithfulness, as a reminder of God liberating God’s people from Egypt. In 1st Corinthians 11 as well as the Gospels, when the apostles record Jesus telling his disciples to give thanks, that thanks is supposed to be directed towards the blood of Jesus. Christ’s death is supposed to be the primary object of the Christian’s gratitude. As the Church, followers of Christ need only the example of our Lord’s victory-through- self-sacrifice in reminding us of our need to be grateful to the Triune God.

Our devotion to a Suffering God should lead us to join in the pain and suffering of others, rather than neglect them in the name of patriotism or family time. Certainly, the Puritans did a lot of good things, but let us not try to cover up genocide. Sugar-coating the truth is perhaps the most violent act a community can do. Naturally, the more lies that are told about a community’s history, the further away relationships within these communities become. I have in mind Frantz Fanon‘s description of the colonial situation in his The Wretched of the Earth, there is a fabrication (say, for example, whites are superior to blacks), and so the relationship between these people groups is severed to begin with because both the colonized and the colonizer are living a lie from the start.

Perhaps the best and perhaps even a more subversive form of Christian gratitude is for one to educate one-self about the story of the Wampanoag people, and the fate that befell them after the first Thanks-taking. Taking a stand in solidarity with the oppressed is better reflective of a people who worship the Crucified God.

That, and passing the cranberry sauce.