October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

According to Britannica, Helge and Anne Ingstad discovered “the remains of a Viking encampment that they were able to date to the year 1000,” almost 500 years before Columbus’ landing on islands in the Bahamas (rather than on the mainland of North America).[1] The Graenlendinga Saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) has Bjarni Herjólfsson as the first European to see mainland North America in 985. At around the year 1000 CE, Leif Eriksonn, son of Erik the Red, “is reported to have led an expedition in search of the land sighted by Herjólfsson,” according to Eiríks Saga Rauda.[2] This is consistent with the empirical evidence found in Newfoundland.  Leif Eriksonn “found an icy barren land he called Helluland (“Land of Flat Rocks”) before eventually travelling south and finding Vinland (“Land of Wine”).[3] Later, Leif’s brothers travelled to Vinland, where their expedition stayed for three years. This is certainly sufficient to refer to the holiday on October 12^th as “Vikings’ Day,” or “Eriksonn Day,” which would cover the brothers too. Columbus Day has been antiquated by the discovery of Viking artifacts on the mainland of North America, in Newfoundland, which is a lot closer to where the Puritans settled than is the Caribbean islands, which of course are not on the mainland of North America.

To be sure, the peoples who came to be known as American Indians by the Europeans had come to North America thousands of years earlier, and thus were not indigenous either, could be said to have been the first people to discover America, from the vantage point of Asia rather than Europe. But those people emigrated gradually from east Asia over a land-bridge that extended back then westward from Alaska, rather than coming over after an expedition of discovery. In any case, the word “Indigenous” can be struck from “Indigenous Peoples” Day for greater accuracy.

In short, Vikings Day can safely, from the perspective of the hyperactive ideologies, be used for the holiday, as there is no evidence that the Vikings in the eleventh century mistreated any of the earlier arrivals from Asia. The dialectic of Columbus Day and American Indians Day can thus be done away with at a higher level of historical accuracy.

The role of ideology in making and remaking holidays in the U.S. can be seen as it has played out at universities located in different member states. At Harvard, which is located in Massachusetts, classes and offices were closed on “Indigenous Peoples Day” on October 12, 2024, without any mention of “Columbus Day” in the academic calendar. The ideological preference is clear not only in which name the university used for the holiday (rather than using both names), but also in the fact that the university did not cancel classes for Veterans Day. Universities in the militaristic member-state of Arizona had classes on Columbus Day but not on Veterans Day.  Whereas Harvard kept its libraries open on “Indigenous Peoples Day,” public universities in Arizona did not even do that for Veterans Day, in spite of the fact that students would obviously be studying on a one-day break from classes. Harvard is typically compared with Yale. Not even Yale cancelled classes on October 12^th (or on Veterans Day); instead, Yale, unlike Harvard, had a fall break of one week in October, which did not include Columbus Day.

In short, the respective university administrations, reflecting the political ideology that was most powerful locally, were making ideological statements in deciding whether and when to not hold classes on particular holidays. Harvard’s administration used the excuse that Cambridge, Mass recognized “Indigenous Peoples Day” as the reason why the university was recognizing that holiday and not Columbus Day, even though it too was a national (and state) holiday. I would not be surprised if Americans of Italian ancestry felt a slap. Part of the problem with ideology-fueled resentment is that such collateral damage is ignored or even, in a twisted way, believed to be justified.  Allowing an ideology to turn holidays into a battlefield is in dire need of being debated in the public square in the United States, rather than being tacitly allowed due to the efforts to intimidate. “Thanksgiving IS a day of sorrow! You better not disagree!” Such has been the tone intended to thwart even debate on the matter.

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1. Jeff Wallenfeldt, “Did the Vikings Discover America?” Britannica.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Thanksgiving as a Day of Mourning: On the Instinctual Urge of Resentment

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.   

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[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.