THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
Highlight it. Underline it. Put it where you can see it.
Repeat it to yourself during your shower.
Say it between every sip of coffee.
Shout it at the news on the radio as you commute to and from work.
Write it on a Post-It note and stick it to your dashboard, your desk, your bathroom mirror, and your bedside table.
Write it on the check when you sign for your credit card payment at the restaurant where you have your lunch.
Put it on a button and pin it to your shirt.
Mutter it as a prayer before you go to bed.
Never allow yourself to get complacent. Never allow yourself to just go with the flow or go along to get along. This is not normal.
Don’t get over it.
The first Thanksgiving Day did occur in the year 1637, but it was nothing like our Thanksgiving today. On that day the Massachusetts Colony Governor, John Winthrop, proclaimed such a “Thanksgiving” to celebrate the safe return of a band of heavily armed hunters, all colonial volunteers. They had just returned from their journey to what is now Mystic, Connecticut where they massacred 700 Pequot Indians. Seven hundred Indians - men, women and children - all murdered.
This day is still remembered today, 373 years later. No, it’s been long forgotten by white people, by European Christians. But it is still fresh in the mind of many Indians. A group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole’s Hill for what they say is a Day of Mourning. They gather at the feet of a stature of Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember the long gone Pequot. They do not call it Thanksgiving. There is no football game afterward.
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