Before I closed up my electronics for the day on Wednesday, I saw a local business announce on social media that it was closing on Thursday -- not for Thanksgiving, but for a National Day of Mourning.
"Because we recognize the generational impact of Colonial Settlers' theft of Native lands and the attempted erasure of Native cultures, we observe this date as a National Day of Mourning," the owners wrote.
This wasn't a surprise. The business is known for its lefty activism, and it's situated in the middle of a very left-leaning-and-sympathetic college town. And one of the two institutions of higher education here is devoted entirely to educating Native students -- where, it's fair to say, the attitude toward American history and national celebrations is generally (but not uniformly) skeptical. If you stop to think for a few minutes from their point of view, how could you possibly blame them?
They say that history is written by the victors. In this time and in this country, at least, that notion seems less true than ever.
Thanksgiving is routinely contested -- online at least -- and the big Christopher Columbus statue in my other favorite town, Philadelphia, is currently hidden from public view. Monuments to people like Thomas Jefferson and even Abraham Lincoln are under reconsideration.
And we get proposals like this.
If you know me, then you know this holds some appeal. I once wrote about the benefits of shame:
We've become used to thinking about shame as bad, even toxic. Taken to excess, that can be true. But shame can also be useful. Some researchers argue that shame evolved to help humans learn to live better together — that it's a "neurocognitive architecture" that helps us refrain from taking actions that can harm the group, and to limit how much others learn about and spread details of your bad behavior.
"The function of shame is to prevent us from damaging our social relationships, or to motivate us to repair them," Daniel Sznycer of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology said in 2016.
There is something sociopathic about a person who can feel only chest-beating pride at his accomplishments while trying to forget about his crimes. There is something dangerous about somebody who thinks their good intentions outweigh the consequences of their actions. The same, I obviously think, is true of countries.
So I believe in a good day of atonement now and again.
But: It needn't -- shouldn't -- substitute for a day of gratitude.
We need both.
We humans -- we Americans -- are not simply one thing or another, I don't think. We have our good points and our bad points, and while I'm sympathetic to those who see our history as long parade of crimes ... I don't think that's entirely true.
At their best, religious traditions find this balance. There are times of year we celebrate, and times of year we acknowledge repent of our sins and try to wipe the slate clean. Doing both is healthy.
However: Nations aren't religions -- at least, not formally -- and they tend to lean to the "celebrate" side of things. We don't have both Thanksgiving and a Day of Atonement, we only have the former. So I don't blame those folks who can't partake in today's holiday, if only because we never seem to get around to the atonement. I couldn't even begin, in good conscience, to tell the local Native students to celebrate Thanksgiving today.
What I would say is: You don't ever have to give thanks for things you're not thankful for.
Ever.
But it's good to cultivate gratitude -- if not this day, then another.
Me, I will try to take time to be really, truly thankful today. My freelance writing career is humming along at the moment -- I can pay the bills. My health is better than it has been for a decade. I'm getting to watch my son grow into a young man, which is something I feared I wouldn't get to witness. I am thankful for my family, and my friends, and the places I find community.
To all who celebrate -- and to those who don't -- I wish you a day of rest and peace.
The East (particularly Japan, but not exclusively of course) provides us with examples of shame cultures. They can be wonderful (like Japan is now, where its citizen fans stay late to clean up foreign sports stadia even when their team is not involved in the game). And we see the negative results when shame is ignored, or even morphs into hubris, as I would argue was largely the case in Japan from the late Meiji through 1945. There is a lot to be said for a healthy dose of shame. Any culture that avoids it risks hubris, and that, much more often than shame, causes problems. And it's not completely lacking in the West of course. There, it's mostly called "self-reflection".