Oh, put a stake in me!  I just can’t take all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.  You won.  Alright?  You came in and you killed them and you took their land.  That’s what conquering nations do.  It’s what Julius Caesar did.  He’s not going around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.”  The history of the world is not people making friends.  You had better weapons and you massacred them.  End of story.

~Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4, “Pangs”~

I adore Thanksgiving.  It is possibly my favorite annual celebration.  In the nine Thanksgivings since I left college, I have been known to put on some serious feasts.  The compulsive planner in me thrives on reviewing recipes, writing up a menu, gathering ingredients from at least four different grocerey stores,  and preparing each dish with love.  And like the Buffster, the sentimental mystic, in me is attracted to the ritual and tradition of the day and the spiritual nature of collecting loved ones around the table.  But the budding history buff in me (cultivates by Athena, actually) struggles with the background for this cultural melee and has to acknowledge that Spike has a valid point. 

So what’s a girl to do?  Especially a girl who espouses the goal of homeschooling socially conscious children with an accurate understanding of the true events of human history with all its inherrant beauty and malice, amazing acts of love and mind boggling atrocities alike.  The best I’ve been able to come up with is to focus on the “Thanks” part of Thanksgiving for now.  To teach our children that, in this day and age, it is our country’s cultural tradition to take a day to focus on our blessings, to cultivate a spirit of gratitude.  We’re going to skip stereotypical dancing pilgrims and singing natives.  Two years from now, when we reach that period of history in our curriculum, we’ll get to the settlement of North America by the European colonists and tackle the history behind Turkey Day. 

Modern Americans cannot make up for all of our early historical mistakes.  And this modern American is not going to waste time trying.  I’ll spend tomorrow revelling in the modern customs and rituals that are meant to invoke that spirit of gratitude within me and my offspring.  I will give thanks for my family and my life with reckless abandon.  And I will continue to strive to raise children who, with any luck, will turn out to be the type of Americans who can successfully lead this nation through their contemporary history-making events, learning from previous generations’ mistakes and moving forward into a brillant future. 

Happy Thanksgiving!