Giving Thanks vs Thanksgiving Day
Giving Thanks is a concept born out of Conscience but while giving thanks is meant to portray a sincere gesture of appreciation from within oneself toward something in the outside world, the gesture has become conditional based on personal gain. Those personal gains can either be physical, emotional, or ideological. In essence, they all have nothing to do with Thanksgiving Day.
I’m writing about Giving Thanks because today is Thanksgiving Day. It is a national holiday here in Canada that is very similar to the globally known Thanksgiving Day of the United States. We celebrate it earlier than the US because, due to a shorter growing season, our harvest is sooner. If you guessed that Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be about giving thanks to Nature you would be right however, since the beginning, Thanksgiving has also been about enforcing religious ideologies.
It was a deficiency of conscience and a reliance on religious ideology that drove the first European settlers to North America to commit genocide on the Native Indians and take their land. They planted and grew fat but they never gave thanks to the land, the plants, or the animals they exploited to fill their bellies, instead they gave thanks to their God for giving them that land plants and animals.
Today, as religion fades within the minds of North Americans, a new form of Giving Thanks has emerged known as Consumerism. Thanksgiving Day is now a way to give thanks to businesses for lowering their prices on consumer goods. The day after Thanksgiving in the US, known as Black Friday, is the highest grossing shopping day in the country. Here in Canada and many parts of the world, businesses have adopted Black Friday as a major selling day even though there is no holiday in those places at the time of the US Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Day to me means giving thanks to Nature which I do all year long, not just in a day. So instead of giving my time to false narratives of thanking gods or shop owners, I take the time to enjoy good food and the company of family and friends. Most of all I continue to Give Thanks to every living organism that helps to sustain my physical body. #ThanksgivingDay #GivingThanks
Giving Thanks is a concept born out of Conscience but while giving thanks is meant to portray a sincere gesture of appreciation from within oneself toward something in the outside world, the gesture has become conditional based on personal gain. Those personal gains can either be physical, emotional, or ideological. In essence, they all have nothing to do with Thanksgiving Day.
I’m writing about Giving Thanks because today is Thanksgiving Day. It is a national holiday here in Canada that is very similar to the globally known Thanksgiving Day of the United States. We celebrate it earlier than the US because, due to a shorter growing season, our harvest is sooner. If you guessed that Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be about giving thanks to Nature you would be right however, since the beginning, Thanksgiving has also been about enforcing religious ideologies.
It was a deficiency of conscience and a reliance on religious ideology that drove the first European settlers to North America to commit genocide on the Native Indians and take their land. They planted and grew fat but they never gave thanks to the land, the plants, or the animals they exploited to fill their bellies, instead they gave thanks to their God for giving them that land plants and animals.
Today, as religion fades within the minds of North Americans, a new form of Giving Thanks has emerged known as Consumerism. Thanksgiving Day is now a way to give thanks to businesses for lowering their prices on consumer goods. The day after Thanksgiving in the US, known as Black Friday, is the highest grossing shopping day in the country. Here in Canada and many parts of the world, businesses have adopted Black Friday as a major selling day even though there is no holiday in those places at the time of the US Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Day to me means giving thanks to Nature which I do all year long, not just in a day. So instead of giving my time to false narratives of thanking gods or shop owners, I take the time to enjoy good food and the company of family and friends. Most of all I continue to Give Thanks to every living organism that helps to sustain my physical body. #ThanksgivingDay #GivingThanks
