Our topic this week was favorite holiday recipes. I'd like to talk about Thanksgiving specifically, instead. I'll get you a recipe or three, I promise. But I spent a lot of time thinking about the holiday this year, because I was this many years old before I discovered that Indigenous peoples view the day as a national day of mourning. I was this many years old before I found out that the traditional 'pilgrims and natives sharing a feast around the same table' was a manufactured fable and that the true historical account is, naturally, much darker. I didn't call off the holiday. We still made once-a-year food. We enjoyed it as a family. But the fact that a broad swath of our Indigenous neighbors spend the day in mourning circled my brain all day.
I don't want Thanksgiving to be rife with guilt. I don't want to cancel the holiday. I want to create a United States that changes an Indigenous Day of Mourning into reason for Indigenous people to celebrate, too. That means working for justice for Indigenous people. It means creating a system and a culture that honors and values Indigenous voices and views. It means voting and it means learning to be an ally to Indigenous activists and voices.
Changing holidays is hard. Ask anyone who's proposed not making the green bean casserole this year. Or who suggested that we don't need mashed potatoes with gravy AND sweet potatoes. Yet, just because those were the dishes that were always on grandmas table, it doesn't mean those foods were on HER grandmother's table. Asking people to change their food is as hard as asking people to change their views. But it can be done. We can acknowledge the dark and horrific history of colonization in this country, sure. But that's not really the point. The point is shifting the power dynamic. Start as small as honoring standing treaties. How'd that be for a new tradition?
Maybe it sounds simple in my head because the fabric of the holidays has been shifting under foot for the past several years. It started over a decade ago when the traditional turkey and oyster dressing started landing me in the ER with a blinding (literally) migraine every single year. Lemme tell you how fast I got over 'tradition'. It shifted further when Mom and I moved to a vegan Whole Food Plant-based diet. It was both an ethical shift and a health shift. I don't need cholesterol meds any more. Did the turkey we made for the guys make me regret my newish diet? Briefly, yes it did. Not enough to sneak a bite, though. Instead, we had a sheet pan dinner from Vegan Richa that includes a lentil and mushroom loaf (very tasty), dressing made from a whole grain spiced buckwheat bread we make, onion gravy, sweet potatoes, and brussels sprouts with onions and mushrooms (her recipe calls for green beans rather than brussels sprouts, but I'm in the 'green beans are a waste of valuable plate real estate' camp. I'd far rather have roasted brussels sprouts.
And because it's not a holiday without cookies, we found a recipe from My Quiet Kitchen for a Spiced Tahini Oatmeal cookie. I know. I know. Oatmeal cookies are made of cardboard and regret. Especially if there're raisins rather than chocolate chips. These aren't. I swear they aren't. They may never replace sugar cookies and frosting on your holiday table, but for us, they magically taste like a tradition we left behind when we discovered that Mom was so allergic to peanut butter it made her pass out - peanut butter cookies. It's not exact, but damn it's close. And with a cup of tea? Let's just say there may have been a batch of them made on Wednesday morning that didn't see sun down. Low fat? No. So they aren't likely to make rotation in our day-to-day diet.
So I'd like my tradition to make fancy food with a heaping helping of working for justice for our Indigenous hosts.
