In recent months, I’ve worked with a group of Millennials and Gen-Xers. As a 70+ Boomer, these could by my kids or grandkids, and often find myself surprised and impressed by their passion, their energy, and their ideas.
I also find myself suggesting they temper some of their ambitions and emotional responses to current events.
A recent discussion I observed regarded whether and how to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some had planned to meet at a local restaurant since they are either estranged from family, living too far from them or perhaps unable to afford travel. Some simply wanted to make sure that anyone in the group who didn’t have other friends or family to spend time with could be around other like minded people (this group shares a basic political point of view in resistance to the current administration).
One of the members expressed extreme discomfort with the idea of even getting together on Thanksgiving let alone “celebrating” it. This person expressed the argument that Thanksgiving is an aspect of colonialism, a celebration of the genocide of indigenous Americans and the capitalist theft of the lands we now call America.
Early in the discussion they suggested that even sharing food and company would be a political statement in support of colonialism, the glorification of Western Civilization or even White nationalism over other cultures. The others didn’t disagree, but started brainstorming ways that the day could be re-purposed to express these values, such as to make a public announcement in the restaurant about the plight of Native Americans or maybe to have a candlelight vigil and proclaim it a “Day of Mourning,” rather than a day of giving thanks.
As a Jewish American, although not one who has practiced the religion since my childhood, I thought about all the holidays that my family either “celebrated” or “observed” that are Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter. My parents had decided that these holidays, though rooted in religious traditions our religion rejected, were so widespread that not participating would deprive their children of important lifetime experiences that would set us farther apart from our peers, which in the area I grew up and most of America, was overwhelmingly Christian.
We ignored or tolerated the religious aspects of the holidays while enjoying the aspects most important to kids: giving and receiving presents, dyeing eggs, enjoying candy. It occurs to me that many Christian families similarly have decided that Halloween, though rooted in pagan rituals, mostly put those values and beliefs aside to allow their children to dress up and go Trick-or-Treating, an American tradition.
There is value, I believe, in not protesting every historical injustice, in not challenging everyone’s cultural point of view all the time, but there is also value in identifying and naming those injustices to educate people and inform those who may never have questioned them.
President Donald Trump has signed executive orders that require the guardians and interpreters of our national history to highlight what he considers the accomplishments of the European immigrants who have made up the majority of the population since its founding as a nation and to downplay, or “erase” in the words of my younger friends, the suffering and discrimination of other groups the majority has caused.
This Thanksgiving season (as for many, my Thanksgiving often involves gatherings with different groups of family and friends over the course of a week or more), I will give thanks for the health and good lives my family and I enjoy and also for the recent election, which showed that Americans are waking up and angered by the policies of this administration and are ready to elect new leaders when given the opportunity.
I will also be mindful that my family's successes and our health are (to a not insignificant degree) owed to the privileged middle class upbringing we enjoyed, our educational opportunities, and the racial privileges we benefit from in the United States due our "Whiteness". Injustice that has been visited on groups of Americans who fled to America because of injustice they experienced elsewhere, as the Pilgrims did, is the story of America. Their escape and immigration story should be told around American dinner tables at Thanksgiving, much as Jewish families tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt at their tables during the Jewish holiday of Passover.
But the decimation and ongoing discrimination of indigenous populations due to disease, wars, and genocide (a common expression of those times “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” clearly shows the intent) should also be a part of Thanksgiving conversation.
Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston
published with minor edits in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, 11/25/2025
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