Given my accent and distinctly ethnic appearance, it is not any surprise when students ask me whether I celebrate Thanksgiving. To me, the answer is a no-brainer: of course, yes.
If unable to shake off the teacher within me, I might then use the students’ question as a learning opportunity and ask them whether Native Americans and African Americans will be thrilled about Thanksgiving, and whether their responses could be different from how the movies depict the day. “Would you be thankful if you had been brought over as a slave, or if your people were practically wiped off the face of the earth?” is my typical probing question.
As I see their eyes glaze over, perhaps even regretting broaching this topic with me, I lighten it up with my old joke that the best thing about inviting me to Thanksgiving supper is that I am simultaneously both an Indian and an American.
As is the case with me, there is a good chance that to most of us Thanksgiving has expanded beyond the notion of remembering the meal that the early settlers had with Native Americans. Now, Thanksgiving is a day for families to get together, with a common theme of feeling grateful for the good things over the year.
In such an understanding, I would think that “giving thanks” is a universal notion, irrespective of histories, cultures, and traditions. I cannot imagine people in any culture not being thankful for surviving yet another day, or for enjoying life with people they cherish.
I am sure my parents tried drilling into me such a concept of life when I was young and, like most kids, I probably ignored their comments and rolled my eyeballs way up. In any case, every other day it seemed like we had a religious event to thank any one of the thousands of Hindu gods and to pray for the continuation of the good things.
My grandmother, though, was always a tad hesitant to loudly recognize the good things out of a fear that this might trigger the onset of unfortunate events. “Don’t laugh too much,” she warned, “because you will end up crying.” Having experienced too many unfortunate events, including the death of her husband when she was only eighteen and when her son—my father—was barely a month old infant, my grandmother had enough reasons to be cautiously optimistic.
While a day for giving thanks does not seem to have become quite global, Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, is one of the few that has caught on almost all over the world. We might think this is a great idea—“make love, not war”—but, apparently even saying “I love you” can cause controversies. In India
Yes, it is an irony that India, which is known to many in the west only for a much misunderstood Kama Sutra, has quite a few who think celebrating love is not Indian. In a letter to a moderate mainstream newspaper last February, one reader suggested that “to avoid further controversy, the government should restrict, if not control, the celebrations.” I suppose the Hindu god of love, Kama , ought to be thanked for making sure that sanity prevailed. Of course, love triumphs, and people in urban India
Perhaps the reason for why a day of giving thanks is not as universal as it ought to be lies in lighthearted remarks of a friend, an immigrant herself—she tried to convince me that Thanksgiving is the day that husbands buy gifts for their wives. Could it be that a day to give thanks has not caught on, as much as Valentine’s Day has, because there is no gift-giving associated with it? If that is indeed the case, then I have yet another reason to be thankful for.
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