According to CNN’s website, the “sobering truth about the harvest feast that inspired Thanksgiving” is is the fact that colonists killed Indians. According to an analyst at CNN, the American Indian Day of Mourning, established in 1970 for the fourth Thursday of November, turned Thanksgiving “into something more honest” than the Thanksgiving mythos of a peaceful feast in 1621 suggests.[1] The drenching of self-serving ideology in CNN’s “analysis,” like heavy, overflowing gravy obscuring the sight and taste of the underlying mashed potatoes, is something less than honest.
Historically, the feast in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1621, exactly four hundred years before Thanksgiving in 2021, when I am writing this essay, was attended not only by the Pilgrims, but also the Wampanoag Indians. The two peoples were then in an alliance. CNN’s Tensley attempts to derail the value of cross-cultural feast by pointing out that initially, “the pious newcomers didn’t even invite the Wampanoags to the revelry.”[2] The value in the fact that the Indians reveled with the Pilgrims in feasting is not nullified by the fact that the Pilgrims had changed their minds on sending out an invitation. Also, that the invitation served strategic interests in strengthening the alliance is no vice, for the alliance was based on ensuring survival in a changing world.
Moreover, the Day of Mourning is itself partisan in that it tells only a partial truth—namely, that Pilgrims killed Indians in the colonial era of North America. Left unsaid is the equally valid point that Indians killed Pilgrims. That the small pox disease also led to the death of Indians was no fault of the Pilgrims, contrary to Tensley’s ideological resentment. Furthermore, that killing took place between Indian tribes and English colonies generally does not nullify the good that is in a shared feast even among allies. Mourning the loss of American Indians generally as a replacement for Thanksgiving obscures that good and in fact implies that the killings in a broader war nullifies the good that is even in an eventual invitation. It surely must not have been easy for either the Indians or the Pilgrims to sit down together for a feast given the more general prejudice then existing between the Indian tribes and English colonies.
Of course, the point of the national Thanksgiving holiday established by President Lincoln in the nineteenth century—namely to give thanks to God—is of value in itself rather than being nullifiable by the hitherto conflict between the English colonies and Indian tribes in North America.
The 2021 Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. (Source: CNN) Surely such happiness does not deserve to be sullied by sordid resentment as a will to power.
In short, the imposition of a day of mourning over Thanksgiving really misses the point. In actuality, the imposition is, in Nietzschean terms, an instinctual urge fueled by resentement. Nietzsche claims that more pleasure from power can be had by mastering such an intractable urge rather than letting it run wild. Such overcoming internally is the signature of strength—more so even than conquering enemies on a battlefield. Unfortunately, the weak are so oriented to their external enemies that even truth can suffer and giving thanks to God can be overlooked entirely. The weak are children of a lesser god. A god of projected resentement, which discredits the very notion of a benevolent deity. Like light from a distant star, Nietzsche writes, the news of the discrediting murder of the conception of a vengeful god of perfect goodness has not yet reached the murderers, whose hands are drenched with blood. To claim, out, out damned spot! yet not know the source of the blood must surely be a worrisome interim condition drenched with anxiety, which in turn can fuel an instinctual urge based in resentement of the strong—people willing and able to control even their most intractable instincts.
[1] Brandon Tensley, “National Day of Mourning Turns Thanksgiving into Something More Honest,” CNN.com, November 25, 2021 (accessed same day). CNN labels Tensley’s role as that of an analyst rather than an opinion-writer—the false attribution of fact belies the salience of the writer’s opinion-informed ideology.
[2] Ibid. Tensley’s own hostile ideological resentment is evident in his labeling of the Pilgrims as pious—here connoting a presumption of superiority. The Indians no doubt also felt superior, as it is only natural for any people, including the Pilgrims and Indians, to favor one’s own culture over others if one’s ideology (i.e., values and beliefs) is in sync with one’s culture.
[1] Brandon Tensley, “National Day of Mourning Turns Thanksgiving into Something More Honest,” CNN.com, November 25, 2021 (accessed same day). CNN labels Tensley’s role as that of an analyst rather than an opinion-writer—the false attribution of fact belies the salience of the writer’s opinion-informed ideology.
[2] Ibid. Tensley’s own hostile ideological resentment is evident in his labeling of the Pilgrims as pious—here connoting a presumption of superiority. The Indians no doubt also felt superior, as it is only natural for any people, including the Pilgrims and Indians, to favor one’s own culture over others if one’s ideology (i.e., values and beliefs) is in sync with one’s culture.
