This Ain’t Your Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving

Let’s go ahead and name the turkey in the room.

Thanksgiving, as most of us learned it, is a myth soaked in cranberry sauce and whitewashed history. The real story isn’t about friendship and harvest festivals. It’s about colonization, stolen land, and generations of erasure wrapped up in an elementary school play starring construction paper hats and buckle shoes.

So before we give thanks, we tell the truth.

Because truth-telling is a kind of gratitude, too, it’s how we honor the people whose voices were silenced and the communities still living with the cost of that silence.

But Also… Gratitude Is Good Medicine

Here’s the thing: we still need Thanksgiving. 

Not the cartoon version. 
Not the Manifest Destiny mess. 
But the real, soul-saving pause that reminds us to notice who and what is still good in the world.

Not the kind of “thankfulness” that tells people to be quiet and settle. I’m talking about the kind that looks injustice in the eye and still says, “Thank you for showing up anyway.”

Gratitude like that? That’s resistance.

Who I'm Thankful For

Here’s to the ones who stir the pot in all the right ways.

To the dissidents and the dreamers –
you remind us what’s possible, even when it’s hard to believe.

To the peacemakers and the potluck organizers –
you keep showing up with casseroles and courage.

To the folks who bring folding chairs to the justice table –
and sometimes extra snacks because you knew someone would forget.

To those who show up early to set out the hymnals,
who stay late to fold up the chairs,
who send the text to check in,
who remember birthdays, and pack an extra umbrella just in case.

To the loud-mouths who speak truth in uncomfortable rooms.
To the love warriors who sit with grief and don’t rush the healing.
To the neighbor-huggers who wave at strangers… and mean it.
To the protest marchers with sore feet and full hearts.
To the tear-wipers, the sign-makers, the bread-breakers.

To those who extend kindness like it costs nothing,
and call out cruelty like it costs everything.

To the ones who refuse to confuse comfort with freedom.
To the ones who believe faith ought to make you more tender, not more entitled.

To the ones who keep lighting candles in the wind.
To the ones who laugh even when it’s raining.
To the ones who carry joy like it’s part of the resistance – because it is.

To the ones who stay soft in a world that keeps trying to harden them.

To those who just keep going – not because it’s easy,
not because anyone's handing out awards,
but because Love keeps whispering, “Come on now. Keep going. We’re not done.”

I see you.
I thank you.
I’m better because of you.
We all are.

And if nobody else says it today:
You matter.
You’re doing more than you know.
And I’m so, so thankful for you.

What I'm Thankful For

I’m thankful for homemade soup and shared playlists.

For drag queens who teach Sunday School better than most seminarians.
For chosen family and unchosen persistence.
For people who vote like they love their neighbor.
For porch lights left on, casseroles dropped off, and stories told around mismatched tables.

I’m thankful for the messy middle. 
The ones figuring it out as they go. 
The ones building something softer, truer, more just…
even if it means tearing down what they were handed.

And I’m thankful for rest. 

Not simply naps and early bedtimes (though we all ought to be thankful for those too), but that deep-in-your-bones kind of rest that comes when you know you’re not alone in the work anymore.

So Pass the Pie and Keep the Fire Burning

This Thanksgiving, 
I’m not raising a glass to a myth. 
I’m raising it to the people who never stopped making a better story.

May our gratitude be as loud as our grief.
May our joy be as stubborn as our justice.
And may our tables keep growing…
even when the world tells us to shrink.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

Pass the pie.
Pass the mic.
Pass the love.