U.S.A. Today Obscures, We Ignore

Every year we can be sure that when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas, there will be a few articles in the major newspapers that seek to deflate the enthusiasm for the holiday at hand via deconstructon or re-evaluation. Meanings will be slighted, founders critiqued, motives questioned, and dates adjusted, all so that some not particularly relevant point can be made.

So if it is Christmas, you will be reading about those who are depressed, or flying to the Bahamas to escape the holiday. Christmas will be flattened into a bland holiday crepe sauced over with Kwanzaa, solstice and Diwali. Santa will be on hand, Jesus on hold.

If it is Easter, you will reading about Jesus being rediscovered as temple Al Sharpton, or father of ten, or various other divinity busting careers. The newspapers will help you to select the prettiest bonnet to wear when taking your child to Central Park to meet Jesus's understudy (that would be the Easter bunny), but hardly review the best church to hear the resurrection story retold.

And if it is Thanksgiving, you will be informed that you are feasting on dual holocaust days, for turkeys and Native Americans. (Which makes you wonder if we can eat at all, given the past African American experience of slavery 365 days a year, or the suffering of nearly every ethnicity at the hand of someone at every moment of world history).

But we are blessed with USA Today's efforts on Wednesday, and an attempt by a woman, whose name I will ignore, to propose that the first Thanksgiving had much to do with a Spanish explorer celebrating with Timcua Indians in St. Augustine Florida back on September 8th 1865.

This effort fits quite nicely with the modern day sleight of educational hand that has transformed a near religious moment of thanking God for providing, into one of thanking Native Americans for the act of being on hand with snacks and food advice. But then again, if one does not have a strong belief in God, or how he might use others to help you, then one probably cannot see beyond the people to thank the God that sent them.

The efforts in Florida take us further in the direction of obscuring the events of those who played the formative role in the founding of the nation.

So this holiday I am thankful for the USA Today, because now I have a place to put my plate of turkey without ruining my mom's table.