A Change For The Holiday

Happy Thanksgiving.

I think. (Though thinking is not encouraged all that much nowadays.)

With all the PC emphasis, there has been a suggestion that we change the name of the holiday we celebrate today to “Day of Atonement.” After all, others got here before we did so we had to steal the land from them. And since then, look at all the sins we have perpetrated. Were we not here and society in control of those who lived before Columbus the world would be a much better place. (Indeed, Columbus was one of our first embarrassments. He slaughtered many of the land's true owners, and introduced diseases that weakened or killed many of the survivors.)

And what have we done since then? We've oppressed. We've fought wars, burdened our own people, ignored the woes of others (of whom we've always taken advantage) and sinned in many other ways. We're weighed down by guilt. And it's real guilt – not simply imagined.

Most of us don't recognize our evil so those who do must eternalize the concept. So it is up to the sensitive and perceptive among us to do so – to make sure it is the backbone of the emerging catechism of the newly emerging secular American religion. And the focus of that religion is not G_d but people like us – people only concerned about ourselves. We're no longer interested in theology of the type practiced in the past. So it is our obligation to make it disappear like the history we find offensive.

The best solution is to secularize the holiday. It is not appropriate that we show appreciation for the benefits we have received from our Creator. After all, we stole them – often killing in order to do so. We cannot congratulate ourselves for bringing peace to the world – what we have suppressed we have done with nuclear weapons which threaten more that they reassure – and war continues anyway. We support tyranny, in our own country as well as internationally. We are guilty of sexism, racism, ageism, and, though the proponents of change do not note it, egotism. We have many other faults and rather than celebrate our good fortune, it is more important that we eradicate it and grieve the evils we have created for ourselves and imposed on others.

We have become a self-obsessed society, mostly because some self-obsessed people cannot abide our good fortune and, instead, blame ourselves for it. They cannot tolerate our gratitude for our accomplishments, blaming them, instead, on what we have gained at the expense of others. And when they cry, they don't want to do so alone. If they are suffering, so should we.

And we should be atoning as well, not thinking about the idiocy of the proposal.