Do You Have Queer Holiday (Coping) Plans?
We’re Lesbian Elders Reinventing Thanksgiving
Celebrating Native Americans and our chosen families
Dear Friends,
In our culture, the Thanksgiving holiday is a time to get together with family and eat a big meal together. For some it also involves a day off from work and watching football.
But we pagans believe these traditional holidays can be so much more. Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to reflect on our collective history, and also to conduct our own rituals.
How We Celebrate
Whether or not we cook a big turkey dinner, many of us practice Thanksgiving rituals. My and my wife Holly’s ritual is to get together with our exes. We introduced them at a Thanksgiving dinner 13 years ago and they fell in love. We were surprised, and also delighted. Barb and Ana have become our “exes and besties.” We are participating in a lesbian tradition of incorporating our exes into our chosen families.
This year we had planned to meet our besties in between our house and theirs. They live about eight hours drive away in southern California. But that plan was shelved when Holly’s 89-year-old mother, who lived in a nearby assisted living place, approached death. Our friends drove to our house instead. Ana, who had a close relationship with Holly’s mom, was able to see her, and our friends were here when she died.
They helped us in all sorts of ways. Our chosen family was with us at this critical time.
We lesbian elders are also participating in a pagan practice of reimagining rituals to correspond with modern life. The meaning and celebration of American holidays can evolve to reflect new understanding of our history. In the last few years Americans have been rethinking the stories traditionally connected with Thanksgiving.
In elementary school in the 1950s I participated in those Thanksgiving pageants in which you were either a Pilgrim — boys with black buckled hats and shoes, girls in long, aproned dresses and bonnets — or an Indian with feathered headband and tomahawk. The story we enacted was a peaceful meeting and feast between Indians and pilgrims just off the Mayflower. We were told it was the beginning of a happy, long relationship between settlers and Indians. It’s a myth.
Sadly, almost all of what we were taught was incorrect and incomplete; the myth conveniently left out the parts about genocide, slavery and land theft.
Forgotten History
The phrase “merciless Indian savages” is written into the Declaration of Independence. That says all we need to know about how the founders of our country viewed the indigenous people in this land.
For centuries, the American government saw Indians as the enemy, sponsoring their slaughter and “removal.” Through a series of notorious atrocities, including the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee, (and in California, our own Trail of Tears in 1863, and the Bloody Island Clear Lake massacre in 1850, among others) the United States adopted an official expansionist policy of discriminating against Native Americans in favor of encouraging white settlers in their territories. This led to the subjugation, oppression, and deaths of Native Americans, whose communities still feel its effects. Only in 1924 were Native Americans allowed to become citizens of the United States, and it took decades more for all states to permit them to vote.
But as we Americans acknowledge this history, our contemporary view of Native Americans is changing.
Two different early gatherings may have inspired the American Thanksgiving holiday. At the first, in 1621, Wampanoag were not invited to the pilgrims’ feast, but heard celebratory gunshots and came to the aid of the colonists. They had formed a mutual defense pact. Once there, the Indians stayed and feasted, but the feast did not resolve ongoing prejudices or differences between them. Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, this was not the start of any long-standing tradition between the settlers and the Wampanoag tribe. The myth doesn’t address the deterioration of this relationship, culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars, King Philip’s War.
Ironically, Thanksgiving as a holiday originates from the Native American philosophy of giving without expecting anything in return. The Wampanoag tribe not only provided food for the first feast, but also the teachings of agriculture and hunting, which kept the colonists alive.
The first written mention of a “thanksgiving” celebration occurs in 1637, after the colonists brutally massacred an entire Pequot village of 700 people, then celebrated their barbaric victory, giving thanks to their god.
A Day of Mourning
For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the following centuries of oppression and genocide.
Indian protests in the 1960s and 70s often attacked the Thanksgiving myth. In 1969 after natives took over Alcatraz, allies and Indians of all tribes came together for Unthanksgiving Day, a gathering that’s become a tradition, welcoming all visitors to a dawn ceremony on the island.
In 1970 during a Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, activists from the American Indian Movement stormed the Mayflower II ship and occupied it in protest. It was then that the United American Indians of New England recognized the fourth Thursday in November as a National Day of Mourning, to bring awareness to the long-lasting impacts that colonization had on the Wampanoag and other Native American tribes. This year the in-person event will also be livestreamed.
Our Place in the World
Americans are told and we want to believe that we are the saviors of the world. But historical truth is far different. Does the updating of the Thanksgiving myth mean that we Americans are beginning to acknowledge our country’s history of colonialism and genocide? I hope so.
President Biden, proclaiming November 2023 as National Native American Heritage Month, said, “I urge all Americans, as well as their elected representatives at the Federal, State, and local levels, to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. Also, I urge all Americans to celebrate November 24, 2023, as Native American Heritage Day.
“We recognize the invaluable contributions of Native peoples that have shaped our country and honor the hundreds of Tribal Nations who continue exercising their inherent sovereignty as vital members of the overlapping system of governments in the United States.”
Harvest Rituals
Long before settlers arrived, indigenous people were celebrating the autumn harvest and the gift of the earth’s abundance. Native American spirituality emphasizes gratitude for creation, care for the environment, and recognition of the human need for communion with nature and others. I hope we can incorporate these ideals into our American harvest celebrations while we as a species still live.
I feel far closer to indigenous spiritual practices than to traditional christianism, which teaches domination over the earth and its living inhabitants. Paganism is a spirituality based on our relationship to the earth. You don’t have to go to pagan church or believe in any doctrine. I consider myself a secular paganist. I worship by walking around in nature.
Land acknowledgment
No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. In Sonoma County we live on unceded territory of the Pomo, Wappo and Coast Miwok tribes.
A good Thanksgiving to you all.
This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Do You Have Queer Holiday (Coping) Plans?
