I feel no need to apologize for liking turkey, the NFL, or my extended family, so I have no problem with expressing my disagreement with Thanksgiving naysayers. Thanksgiving is, by far, my favorite American holiday, and it’s probably because it has no real religious component. For me, it is a reason to get together with great uncles and aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews. We get together and enjoy each other’s company and recipes, without any ideological reason for doing so. We do it just because we want to and because we like to be together. We don’t have to succumb to any consumerism by buying each other gifts, nor do we have to play make-believe about the reality of fat men who ride in sleighs or rabbits that lay eggs. There is no pretention involved. In my family, we don’t celebrate the first Thanksgiving or give it any sacred place. The only thing we hold sacred is the tradition of gathering, and we gather for its own sake.
I find Thanksgiving naysayers to be the most uptight and boring of people. I’m sorry if you don’t like your family, but that is no reason to blame Thanksgiving. If you insist on seeing the holiday as some kind of whitewash of the genocide of Native Americans, I am also sorry, but I simply don’t look at Thanksgiving that way. For me, it is simply a secular excuse for the family to get together and celebrate being a family. And that makes it the best of all holidays.