It's Thanksgiving and time for "the wokies" to bring up white supremacy along with more about "the stolen land" theories.  It's also time to read a good article about what happened in Massachusetts many years ago.  I found this one by Tristan Justice really good and would recommend it a lot:

All we know about the first Thanksgiving extends to a man named Edward Winslow, an eyewitness who devoted a single paragraph to the event describing Massasoit showing up with 90 men who went out and killed five deer to cook with what the English were preparing. The two groups then feasted for three days.

In short, the Pilgrims took a moment to celebrate abundance after nearly a year of pandemic grief following the death of half their settlement alongside their native neighbors who had also suffered recent harrowing losses. Sound familiar?

Yes, it sounds familiar.  Our family didn't suffer like the Pilgrims or survive a long winter, but it was not easy for my dad with two jobs, my mom counting every dollar and making ends meet somehow.  How did they keep so many balls in the air?

We used to have a lot of conversations about Thanksgiving in those early days.  It was a completely new holiday for us.  I learned the details watching turkey posters in school and hearing kids talk about Pilgrims.

My father once said something really good, and it gets better age.  He reminded me that the Pilgrims said thanks to God for surviving a rough start.  That's all you have to remember about this holiday, he would repeat every time the topic came up.  Everything else, from eating turkey to whether it happened in winter or spring, is just a detail.

That's right.  Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and counting your blessings.  Everything else is fun but inconsequential.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving Day, and give thanks for all you have — in our case, a new grandson who turned six months this week and a 91-year-old mom who has not lost a step after all these years.  And we live in the U.S. where we can be free in so many ways.

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Image: Pixnio.