Thanksgiving

Giving Thanks

Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.

Readings

The first reading was from an interview: poet Ross Gay was interviewed by Barnes and Noble on the publication of his recent collection of essays titled “The Book of More Delights.”

[Interviewer:] How do you maintain an appreciative mindset even in the harder moments of life?

[Ross Gay:] I’m glad you used the world optimistic because I’m not. Nor am I pessimistic. I am cultivating the practice, and the ability, to describe things that I see. So when I see a guy in terrible shape stopped mid-stride and folded over on Market Street in Philadelphia in what I imagine was some kind of opioid stupor, and see a woman standing next to him for five minutes — five actual minutes — holding a five dollar bill out to him, waiting from him to emerge from wherever he went, I’m just describing what I’m seeing: profound suffering and profound care right next to each other. It’s not a proclivity or a bent, it’s just a description.

The second reading was from the poem “Play” by William Carlos Williams

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
By what devious means do you contrive
To remain idle? Teach me, O Master.

Sermon: “Giving Thanks”

We Unitarian Universalists are notorious for our use of reason in religion. We like to think about things. We like to doubt things. When someone talks about a religious belief, we ask ourselves: Does this religious belief sound reasonable? Does it conform to the rules of logic and reason? When someone talks about a religious narrative or myth, we ask the same questions: Does this myth sound reasonable? Does this myth conform to the rules of logic and reason?

This attitude can get us into trouble. We get used to arguing among ourselves, questioning each other about religious beliefs and religious myths. Then when we talk to others who are not Unitarian Universalists, we may find ourselves arguing with someone’s deeply held and very personal religious belief or myth, and unintentionally causing offense. Sometimes our use of reason can get in the way of our commitment to religious tolerance.

So with that in mind, I’d like to take a quick look at the myth of Thanksgiving, one of the core myths of the United States of America. Since we’re Unitarian Universalists, of course we’re going to doubt some key aspects of this myth. But instead of just doubting some of the details of the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, I’m going to suggest a different interpretation of Thanksgiving, one which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.

And the sad truth is that our current founding myth of Thanksgiving — that old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag sharing a harvest feast together — has become increasingly divisive. Since the 1970s, many of our Wampanoag neighbors here in southeastern Massachusetts have renamed Thanksgiving as the “Day of Mourning.” As a result, some people from other ethnic groups (that is, people who aren’t Native Americans) have come to feel uncomfortable about celebrating Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly, given how polarized our society has become, people on all sides of this debate have both given and taken offense.

My feeling is that if you like the traditional myth of Thanksgiving, that old story of Thanksgiving that we heard during the Moment for All Ages, go ahead and use that myth as you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday; continue to tell the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians. At the same time, if you’re the typical doubting Unitarian Universalist, you’ll continue to ask questions about that myth, just as we did in the Moment for All Ages.

For example, we Unitarian Universalists will want to ask, “Where were all the women in that first Thanksgiving?” Sixty years ago, when I was very young, the women mostly got left out of the Thanksgiving story. But we like to include the women. For example, we look at Thanksgiving from the women’s point of view and point out that there were only four Pilgrim women old enough to help with the cooking. And no Wampanoag women whatsoever attended that first Thanksgiving.

In another example, we like to remember that not all the Europeans were actually Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were part of a specific religious community, perhaps more accurately called “Separatists.” Not all the English settlers were part of that religious group. Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, about half were Separatists. About thirty of them were other people who had been recruited by the “London Merchant Adventurers” company. Myles Standish is the most famous member of this group; he was not a Separatist, though he was an integral part of the colony. About twenty of the people on the Mayflower were indentured servants, many of them under the age of twenty. On top of that, a few of the crewmembers of the Mayflower decided to stay on with the colony. So we like to increase the accuracy of the old story of Thanksgiving by saying that both Separatists and other English settlers ate dinner with the Wampanoag Indians.

We also like to point out that descendants of both the English and the Wampanoags still live in the area. In other words, this old story lives on in actual flesh-and-blood people whom we might meet in our daily lives. I know a couple of people who are of Wampanoag descent, whose ancestors were part of the old story of Thanksgiving. And I know a few people who trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower passengers; I may even be one of them — Uncle Bob, our family genealogist, was pretty sure my mother was a Mayflower descendant. And not everyone who claims descent from those original participants feels the same way about that old myth: some embrace the myth; some disdain the myth; and some just aren’t all that interested.

I’m one of the ones who have become less and less interested in the old myth of Thanksgiving. I’d like to tell you why, and that will led me into talking about that other, even older, story about Thanksgiving which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.

I feel that by spending so much time talking about Pilgrims and Indians, we tend to obscure deeper truths about the holiday of Thanksgiving. The holiday of Thanksgiving is really all about giving thanks. We can trace its origins back to the age-old human tradition of communities gathering together to give thanks. We can also trace its origins back to the age-old tradition of humans holding harvest festivals. Indeed, the English settlers in 1621 would have called their celebration a harvest festival. The Wampanoag had their own harvest festivals, and when they chanced upon that English harvest festival in 1621 would have understood what was going on.

Contemporary Wampanoag continue to celebrate harvest festivals. In fact, they celebrate frequent harvest celebrations, from the first harvest of strawberries in the spring, to late harvests such as cranberries. Interviewed by the National Museum of the American Indian, Gertrude Hendricks, a Mashpee Wampanaog, pointed out: “A lot of our [Wampanoag] festivals are called ‘thanksgivings,’ because we’re giving thanks for the best of the season. It’s really important to do that … to keep the tradition going, [because] a lot of people just think of thanksgiving as the one day all year when we give thanks for the bounties from the earth. But we do it daily.”

The Pilgrims of 1621 would have understood Gertrude Hendricks’ point that thanks should be given daily. For the Pilgrims did give thanks daily: they would have said grace before meals, a religious ritual of offering thanks to their god for the food that they were about to eat. And in addition to giving thanks daily, they also gave thanks in special celebrations, like harvest festivals. So when we think about that autumn day in 1621, the most important thing to remember is that the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians people were giving thanks.

Today, we live in a world that’s dominated by bad news: political division, social unrest, ecological disaster, and so on. Many of us get obsessed by the bad news. We can get so obsessed with the bad news that we can neglect to give thanks for all that is good in our lives. This is where we supposedly advanced modern people could learn from the example of both the English settlers in Plymouth, and from the Wampanoag Indians. Both those peoples had far more bad news than good news in their lives, yet they remembered to give thanks.

Remember that more than half the English settlers died in that first year. Remember that the Pilgrims among the English had been hounded out of England, and then felt they had to leave Holland. Their lives had been filled with uncertainty and fear and grief for years. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.

As for the Wampanoag, their lives were even more uncertain. From 1616 to 1619, an unknown disease killed as many as 90 percent of the people in many of their villages; yet that epidemic did not affect their traditional enemies, the Narragansett Indians, who lived just to the west. Not only were the Wampanoag grieving the loss of family members and friends — a grief so profound and overwhelming I don’t think we can even even imagine it — but they lived in fear of being invaded at any moment by the Narragansett. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.

These were both peoples who gave thanks even in the face of overwhelming adversity. They gave thanks despite all had gone wrong. They did not ignore the troubled side of life, but they gave thanks anyway.

We could do the same. Ross Gay’s long poem “Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude” shows us how we might learn to give thanks more often. Ross Gay does not shy away from the difficult side of life, and yet he still gives thanks. So, for example, he writes:

…and thank you
for not taking my pal when the engine
of his mind dragged him
to swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze,
and thank you for taking my father
a few years after his own father went down thank you
mercy, mercy, thank you
for not smoking meth with your mother…

And Ross Gay also gives thanks for little trivial moments in life, that may not seem at first to be worthy of thanks — but which are worthy of thanks. So, for example, he writes:

thank you the cockeyed [basketball] court
on which in a half-court 3 vs. 3 we oldheads
made of some runny-nosed kids
a shambles, and the 61-year-old
after flipping a reverse layup off a back door cut
from my no-look pass to seal the game
ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
grinning across his chest…

As a Black man living in America, Ross Gay has also written poems about injustice and his rage at injustice. Yet he knows that giving thanks is essential to our beings. In spite of all the bad things in the world, he does not forget to give thanks.

May we too remember to give thanks. Yes, there is the sadness and injustice and trouble in this world. But there is also much to be thankful for. Yes, we must try to make the world a better place. But we can also give thanks for all that is good.

May we remember to give thanks, not just on one day of the year, but every day. Giving thanks for all that is good should be one of our central spiritual practices. When we arise in the morning, we can offer thanks for all that is given to us. When we eat, we can give thanks for whatever it is that brings forth bread from the earth. We can give thanks when we see and hear and smell the wonders of the natural world.

This is the deeper message of the Thanksgiving holiday: that we should give thanks, not just on one day, but every day.

Dinner Table Conversations

Readings

The first reading is an excerpt from the long poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay:

…And thank you to the quick and gentle flocking
of men to the old lady falling down
on the corner of Fairmount and 18th, holding patiently
with the softest parts of their hands
her cane and purple hat,
gathering for her the contents of her purse
and touching her shoulder and elbow;
thank you the cockeyed court
on which in a half-court 3 vs. 3 we oldheads
made of some runny-nosed kids
a shambles, and the 61-year-old
after flipping a reverse layup off a back door cut
from my no-look pass to seal the game
ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
grinning across his chest; thank you
the glad accordion’s wheeze
in the chest; thank you the bagpipes….

The second reading this morning is from Mourt’s Relation, written in 1622. This reading gives the story of the first Thanksgiving celebration in the words of one of the Pilgrims who was actually there. (The language has been modernized.)

“You shall understand, that in this little time, that a few of us have been here, we have built seven dwelling-houses, and four for the use of the plantation, and have made preparation for divers others. We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom.

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

Sermon: “Dinner Table Conversations”

Remember back in 2019, before the pandemic? It’s so easy to put on our rose-colored glasses, and think — those were the good times, the easy times. We sat down together at Thanksgiving, never knowing that the very next year we wouldn’t be able to have Thanksgiving dinner with all our relatives. And in 2019, we didn’t have to worry about the war in Ukraine, or the war in Gaza and Israel. Ah yes, those were the good times.

Except, of course, they weren’t. Maybe there wasn’t a war in Ukraine nor a war in Gaza and Israel. But I remember some of my friends coming back from Thanksgiving with reports of combative dinner table conversations between the opposing sides of the culture wars. And I remember talking to a non-binary teen who felt exhausted at having to accept that their relatives were just going to refuse to use their preferred pronouns. No, we should not look at 2019 through rose-colored glasses and think: Those were the last good times.

Ah, but if I think back to my childhood…. That was a long time ago. Surely those must have been the last good times. Well, no. I remember Thanksgiving dinner conversations that got onto the subject of the Vietnam War. An uncle would say something about Vietnam, that would provoke a cousin into challenging him, and then my grandmother would have to say in a firm voice, “Do you think it will rain this week?” That was her hint for everybody to drop the subject, and talk about something less controversial. Or actually it wasn’t a hint so much as a command to change the subject; my grandmother was a bit of a Tartar. No, I cannot look back at those childhood Thanksgiving dinners through rose-colored glasses and think: those were the good old days.

Well, then, surely we can think back to the very first Thanksgiving, back in 1621…. That was a really long time ago. Surely those must have been the good old days. In the second reading, we heard an excerpt from “Mourt’s Relation,” a contemporary account of the first celebration of what we now call Thanksgiving. It sounds pretty wonderful, doesn’t it? They had had a pretty good harvest that year, then they went hunting and got even more food, enough to have a big celebration. And when King Massaoit and ninety of his warriors stopped by, together they came up with enough food to go around, and they all shared a big meal together.

And in many ways, that first Thanksgiving really was the good old days. But we also have to remember what happened the previous winter. Less than a year before that first Thanksgiving, something like half of the Pilgrims had died of cold and exposure and starvation. Many of the Pilgrims must have felt sad on that first Thanksgiving; I imagine that more than one of the Pilgrims shed a tear or two for the people who didn’t live long enough to see that first Thanksgiving. And then when we remember that as recently as 1619, King Massasoit and his followers had been subject to a plague that killed off as many as ninety percent of their people, they too must have some sadness on that first Thanksgiving.

So when I imagine the dinner table conversations at the first Thanksgiving (not that they were seated at a table, there’s no way the Pilgrims had tables enough to seat a hundred and forty people) — when I imagine the conversations at that first Thanksgiving, it seems to me that there were many things people didn’t want to talk about. On the Pilgrim side, I can imagine that when the conversation started getting too close to the too-many deaths they had experienced in the previous ten months, one of the elders would firmly say whatever the Pilgrim version was of, “Do you think it will rain this week?” Similarly, on the Wampanoag Indian side, I can imagine that when their conversations started heading towards the aftermath of the plague, and the probability that the Naragansett to the west were going to try to invade, one of the elders would say, quite firmly, the Wampanoag version of, “Do you think it will rain?”

More to the point, the story as told in Mourt’s Relation shows that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags knew the value of doing things together. The Pilgrims, you may remember, “among other recreations, exercised [their] arms” — meaning that the men played games together, winding up with some sort of shooting contest. And when the Wampanoags showed up, they didn’t just hang around talking — they went out hunting so there would be enough food for everyone. As for the Pilgrim women, with only four of them to cook for a hundred and forty people, their focus had to be on working together. Communal events seem to go most smoothly when we’re working together or doing something together.

All this may sound like the usual holiday platitudes that you’d expect from a New Englander: if we all just work together and not talk so much, we’ll be fine. Maybe it’s a platitude, but sometimes platitudes represent wisdom. And I found confirmation for this kind of wisdom from a surprising source: from Seth Kaplan, a professorial lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and internationally-known expert on fragile states. Fragile states are those countries that have such a weak governmental infrastructure that their citizens are exceptionally vulnerable to a variety of shocks. While the United States is not a fragile state, Seth Kaplan realized that some places within the United States function exactly like fragile states — he calls these “fragile neighborhoods.” He contrasts these fragile American neighborhoods with his own neighborhood, which is the opposite of fragile. Kaplan lives in a tight-knit community where neighbors look out for each other, where nearly everyone belongs to several community organizations, including religious congregations and secular groups. Neighbors also help each other out in informal ways, buying groceries for an elderly neighbor, chaperoning at school events, and volunteering in many small ways to help each other out. Kaplan writes:

“As a result of all this, we know all sorts of details about just about every family for many blocks around us — how many kids they have, which schools and camps their kids attend, and what leisure activities they enjoy. However, we spend surprisingly little time talking about politics, and thus know little about many of our neighbors’ political leanings and preferences.” (Seth Kaplan, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One ZIP Code at a Time [New York: Little, Brown, 2023], p. 184.)

When we change our perspective and focus on local community, there simply isn’t much time to spend in highly partisan arguments about national politics. This is not to imply that national politics are unimportant. They are important. But in America today, when it comes to national politics, it feels like our highest priority lies in expressing our individual political opinions. As much as I value free speech and free expression, I don’t think we want to be our highest value. Instead, our highest values are, or should be, hope and courage and love. As the Pilgrims knew deep in their hearts, we humans are meant to be together and to work together; we are communal beings before anything else. My grandmother knew the value of conflict avoidance when she would say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?” Then after dinner, she got us all to avoid conflict by playing cards: sometimes a vicious highly competitive game called “Pounce,” other times poker played for matchsticks.

I’d like to propose that at Thanksgiving, there’s no need to talk about national politics or international politics at all. There will always be people who really do want to talk about partisan politics, or international topics, at Thanksgiving dinner; you may be one of those people. If this is something you want to do at Thanksgiving, and if you can find someone else who wants to express their individual opinions, go ahead and find a corner somewhere where you can go at it hammer and tongs. The rest of us will be doing something like helping in the kitchen, or setting the table, or washing the dishes, or playing cards. The rest of us need not get involved in conversational conflict at Thanksgiving. And even if everyone who comes to your Thanksgiving celebration is in complete agreement — even if you agree completely on every aspect of domestic and foreign policy — you still don’t have to talk about anything to do with the culture wars. In fact, that might be a good way to keep everyone’s blood pressure down.

To put this another way: There are many strategies for managing conflict. Conflict avoidance is one valid conflict management strategy. And there are times — Thanksgiving is one of those times — when conflict avoidance is the best conflict management strategy. Now that I say this, I’m sure that you can think of lots of conflict avoidance strategies. In my childhood, we asked if it was going to rain, or we played vicious card games. Watching football games also works, or playing video games, or — well, you get the idea.

May our Thanksgiving dinner conversation avoid the culture wars. Instead, may our Thanksgiving dinner conversation center on what’s really important: the people you love and care about. May our conversations revolve around questions like these: Who is doing well, and who could use some support? Who would benefit from getting a phone call or a handwritten card? How are the young people doing, and how can we support them? Has anyone visited this or that distant relative, and should we reach out?

May your Thanksgiving conversations center on hope. May they center on courage in daily life. May they be filled with love for neighbors and family and friends.

[This homily followed a play, which showed how many myths of Thanksgiving simply aren’t true.]

For many of us, Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. It hasn’t gotten too commercial. You don’t have to do anything except eat. And it’s all about giving thanks. What’s not to like? — Which means it can be hard to hear that some of the things we thought we knew about Thanksgiving aren’t exactly true.

I think the most depressing thing for me is that after that first harvest celebration in the autumn of 1621, that one day when the Native people and the European colonists sat together in peace, the European colonists went back to treating the Native peoples badly. Just two years later, European colonists who had settled on the Fore River in Weymouth, not too far from here, carried out the massacre of Wessagusset, killing seven native people for no good reason. And in the years to follow, people of European descent went on to sell Native men into slavery, break treaties, steal Native land — a centuries-long litany of abuse that continues to this day. It’s fine for us to remember that moment of racial harmony on an autumn day in 1621, but we must also remember the other four centuries of history of the Native people of Massachusetts.

And I find it disconcerting to learn that our modern celebration of Thanksgiving is really just a fictional invention of Sarah Hale in the mid-nineteenth century. A big dinner with a roast turkey wasn’t central to Thanksgiving until Sarah Hale made it so. In fact, Thanksgiving wasn’t even a national holiday until Sarah Hale started petitioning the president of the United States to make it a holiday. Thanksgiving as we know it today really has no historical connection to the Pilgrims.

While all this may sounds depressing and disorienting, I feel this actually frees us Unitarian Universalists to reinterpret Thanksgiving in some positive ways. Here are some of my ideas:

First, turkey becomes optional. If you like turkey, go ahead and have turkey. But if you’re vegan or vegetarian, or if you’re cutting down on eating meat to lower your carbon footprint, then there’s no reason to serve turkey. Or if you just don’t like turkey all that much, then don’t cook something you don’t like.

Second, we can be more realistic about what happened to Native peoples in southeastern Massachusetts. At some level, we all knew that the old myth of Thanksgiving whitewashed Native history. We all knew that old myth was at least misguided, at worst an outright lie. It’s a relief to be able to let go of a myth that really isn’t true. After all, isn’t that what Unitarian Universalism is all about? We try to find the truth, and not remain mired in misleading myths.

Third, all this means we can start creating a new kind of Thanksgiving. Instead of following the lead of Sarah Hale, we can create a Thanksgiving that’s more in tune with our hopes and dreams and values. We can keep those Thanksgiving rituals that work well for us, and let go of whatever doesn’t work well for us. For myself, I’d like to keep gathering together with family and friends to share a meal, but I don’t feel a need to cook a turkey any more.

Going beyond the Thanksgiving rituals, we might also reconsider the purpose of Thanksgiving. Which means it’s OK to revise the old myth of Thanksgiving, and tell what really happened to the Native peoples. And as we revise that old myth, we can put the emphasis back where it belongs: on giving thanks. We can give thanks in spite of everything that’s going wrong in the world. Last Thanksgiving, I did that for myself by rereading the poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay. I’m going to do that again this year, but this time in public — at this afternoon’s community Thanksgiving celebration, I’ll be reading an excerpt from Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” I especially like Ross Gay’s approach to gratitude, because he gives thanks in spite of his father’s death, in spite of his friend’s drug addiction, in spite of all that can go wrong in this world. Just as I’ll be giving thanks this year in spite of serious health problems in my extended family.

All this makes Thanksgiving simple. We gather together, with friends or family or chosen family — and if prefer your alone time, you can even gather together with just yourself. We gather together, and we give thanks. We give thanks in spite of all that’s wrong with the world. We give thanks for those little moments of joy that burst into our lives, often when we least expect them. We give thanks for whatever is good, for whatever is true.

And that’s all we have to do. Gather together. Give thanks. Anything else we choose to do is icing on the cake. So go ahead and cook that elaborate turkey dinner, with five different kinds of pie, and thirteen side dishes. Go ahead and set up a table that will seat twenty-three, and bring out the fancy dishes and flatware, and create elaborate centerpieces. Go ahead, just so long as you remember to gather together and give thanks. In my household, we might just opt for a Thanksgiving picnic at the beach; that’s what we did for the last thirteen years in California, and it might be warm enough here in Massachusetts this year. It doesn’t matter where you gather, as long as you gather together and give thanks.

May your Thanksgiving be what you want it to be. May your Thanksgiving be as elaborate as you want, as long as you remember the two simple things at its core: to gather together, and to give thanks.