Thanks
As I write, it’s the morning of “Black Friday,” the colloquial name for the Friday after Thanksgiving as celebrated in the United States. Though that name for the day didn’t really pick up national usage until the internet, people in certain regions of the U.S. have been using that name since before I was born. As with many such colloquialisms, the etymology is uncertain, but it’s fairly clear from the name itself that it is a reference to the consumerism attached to the Christmas shopping season and its effects on people.
This is definitely a very American response, to acknowledge, with irony, a situation one finds distressing, but about which one cannot individually do much. Since the advent of the internet, even retailers have embraced the name, declaring “Black Friday Sales” in their advertisements, ignoring, or oblivious to, the irony in that way that only brands can be.
I still think of Black Friday in my head as Buy Nothing Day, a name that implies an alternative approach to the day, one promoted by Adbusters magazine. As such I try not to spend a cent on Black Friday, a deliberate refusal to participate in the sales and their frenzy. Like calling the day “Black Friday,” I know my abstention won’t do much to change the situation, but I endeavor to abstain all the same, because, of course, abstaining isn’t really about changing the world; it’s about changing me.
I feel the same way about Thanksgiving itself. Thanksgiving in the U.S. is a fraught holiday. It was first celebrated during our civil war, after some diaries of early European colonists were discovered and the narrative of what gets called, but what was not actually “the first Thanksgiving” came to light. That narrative, of the country’s indigenous people and the colonists sharing resources and a meal, gave hope to people living in the United States that the Confederacy and its war to secede and continue in the practice of slavery would not succeed, and it offered a satisfying myth about the possibilities of equality and unity, even though the myth obscured the bloody reality of how those colonists and their successors ultimately treated the indigenous people.
Many people with whom I share political goals find that aspect of the holiday troubling enough that they can’t celebrate it at all, a position for which I have much sympathy. My personal approach to most holidays and national myths is to choose to see them not as statements about an historical past (they make for bad history, being mostly factually incorrect, and often functioning to obscure serious national sins) but instead as aspirations of a possible future. The big table where everyone can share and eat and fellowship is not something that ever really happened in the history of my country. Yet.
Yet can be a powerful word, and here I choose to hope that with work and humility, we could maybe build a world where everyone gets a seat at the table. We are a long way off, but I’m a stubborn fellow, so I continue to hope.
I also take Thanksgiving quite literally in another sense, which is one passed down to me via family, namely, that I take the day to reflect on, and to vocally express, what I’m thankful for. My wife and I have a simple little ritual of each listing our yearly thanks for all the good things in our lives and the world from the previous year before we begin eating dinner. Some years this is really hard. This year it was not as hard as others in the recent past. But we always find things to be thankful for, and it seems to be the case that once we begin reciting our thanks, more things to be thankful for appear. Remembering the gifts, mercies, graces, delights and joys brings more and more to mind.
This also will not change the world. But it definitely changes me.
One of the many thinks for which I’m thankful is you, reader. It could very well be that no one found my writing useful or interesting. But you keep reading, and your time and attention are a beautiful gift.
Here are a few poems I’ve written over the years regarding Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Hymn
I did not want to sing a hymn of praise
in the years of plague, in an age of shootings,
with the demagogues, kleptocrats, the bigots,
the invasions & melting glaciers
& people of every politic setting aside love.
Wasn’t I mostly powerless, except in inconsequential
ways? Built, as I was, as poets are, to feel
each travesty & collapse at the level of my own cells
dividing, how could I pray thanks during the police murders,
with the superstorms & starvation, with the billionaires
climbing us all like so many corpses
as if they could ever reach heaven? But
I woke this morning to find an astonishing
light draped across the sleeping face of my wife
& I dared not breathe until a cloud passed outside
the window & tugged it away. & there was the stubbornness
of the only red maple still holding its scarlet
leaves against the November gusts
also the blue jay who landed so close
I could have kissed it. Even the smell of something
delicious from the direction of the neighbors
& scraps of Duke Ellington falling from the window
of a young man’s passing tricked-out car
as I walked toward the stone bridge where the sunrise
was waiting & I saw someone fall from a bicycle
only to be surrounded by strangers,
one checking for wounds, another offering water,
a third testing the bike itself, the rest waiting
to see if they’d be needed, if there was any
way they could help. For decades
I did not say aloud the name of the hand
of love I could sometimes feel myself bumping
against as I clumsied & improvised
my way toward today, but all along it was a second
heartbeat in me, a breath underneath my breathing,
the silence in between footsteps,
a peace in that handful of moments
when I was granted, briefly, a happiness
not without sorrow, but with it lying
curled up on the floor, momentarily asleep.
First Thanksgiving
He gave me the flu
he’d probably caught
on the airplane. We spent
the holiday in fever
together, I so sick
I slept in a separate bed
from his mother who was angry
with me for being unavailable
to share in the childcare.
Sitting up in my sickbed
I held him while he slept
the fitful sleep of the feverish,
his snot & drool seeping
a widening rorschach
blob on my shirt, his infant
body heaving with the tide
of his breathing, hot as a little star
in my lap. In the sweat
of my own sickness I dreamt
the first instance of a recurring
dream in which I’m wandering
a post-nuclear landscape
searching for him, needing
him to be safe. Now he’s tall
as I am, & strong, with a voice
dark as mine. This man
surprised me a few months
ago on a long train ride
back from Coney Island, sitting
next to me he lay his head
on my shoulder, closed
his eyes & napped.
I saw the baby in his face.
His eyelids still look fragile
as flower petals. His lips
have the same shape
they did eighteen
autumns ago. I tried
to slow time down
to quarter speed, to relish
in the tender connection,
the trust, just a little longer,
to savor & save it, knowing
how the world wants to hammer
shut the open hearts
of the young, hoping these minutes
of sweetness
won't be the final such gift.
Thanksgiving Prayer
So much good
has come to me by grace
or good fortune,
despite my inadequacies
& failures, my shortsightedness
& defects of character,
still blessings have lighted
my living like silence
split by birdsong, like splashes
of sunlight on a frosty
morning. Thank you.
May I be worthy
of these gifts. May I become
the person all this largesse
suggests I could be
& thank God
I so rarely get
what I’ve got
coming to me.
Readings
My friend Dougald Hine has begun a Substack. Dougald is one of the founders of the Dark Mountain journal, the host of the podcast The Great Humbling, and a thinker whose wise, provocative and compassionate views in this age of uncertainty always have me reflecting and rethinking my own views.
Music
As it is the end of the year, I have compiled my end-of-year playlist, made of of one song from each album I purchased this year. There is an Apple Music and a Spotify version:
John Paul Davis’s Favorites of 2022 (Apple Music)
John Paul Davis’s Favorites of 2022 (Spotify)
As always, please support these muscians by listening and buying their music.