A few years ago, we decided to stop celebrating Thanksgiving. For the last few years, I’ve done blog posts on how we’re changing Thanksgiving traditions within our own household. You can read those posts here and here.
It’s becoming increasingly more comfortable to not celebrate this holiday. I’ll say one of the hardest parts is still having to answer the question “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” and feeling like that guy who says, we don’t celebrate. Or rejecting the invitations to celebrate the holiday with other folks.
Still, though, even that is getting easier to explain or answer. And I’m happy to know a handful of folks personally who have also decided not to celebrate it anymore.
And I’ve definitely had shifts in my own thinking, political beliefs, and all of that, so I try to stay humble at the same time. Like so many things, it kinda feels like a personal choice, at least at this point.
This year, we stayed home again. We all ate meals together. We took out the Chrismukkah decorations and finished decorating our front window. We still need to put ornaments on the trees (our main one, and two smaller trees in the kids’ room) but we’re hoping to have that wrapped up this weekend.
I put on some Christmas/Hanukkah songs, we organized and cleaned up a few areas in the house that needed some attention.
After lunch, we:
- Read the same “Truth About Thanksgiving” resource from last year
- Donated to the Abalone Mountain Press GoFundMe. The kids read both the Thanksgiving resource and mission of the place to where we donated.
- Watched “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”
We talked together about some history of the U.S. and how it relates to this holiday.
Overall, it was a relaxing day and I feel good about how we’re changing Thanksgiving traditions.
As an aside, I’m excited to see the new horror film, Thanksgiving, whenever I get around to it. And for an additional fun, campy, horror watch on this holiday, I recommend Pilgrim.
Here are some of the previous resources I’ve shared:
- Illuminative website
- Article: The True, Dark History of Thanksgiving
- Border Angels
- Tribal Nations Maps
- Native Land map – to find which tribes originated in your city
- IG Accounts: @dawnlandmovie @illuminative @nativegiving @delfinaroybal @decolonizemyself
- Thanksgiving is a Celebration of White Supremacy & Indigenous Genocide– IG post
This is how we’ve been gradually changing Thanksgiving traditions within our own family. For more posts like this, click here.