As Halloween unhooks its offensively long talons in the hearts of Americans, Thanksgiving rears its extremely boring head. Spooky spiders and skeletons are replaced reluctantly with… birds. Big, huge, ugly, birds and a few leftover pumpkin decorations that weren’t Halloween specific enough to be tossed in the bin. Brown leaves become an acceptable motif as we spend 28 days waiting in anticipation for the worst day of the year.
Okay, it’s not that I don’t like Thanksgiving. I do, I promise. Well, I like bread. And cranberry sauce. And five to seven members of my family, on good days. So the day is perfect if you take away the rest of it.
But, oh god, the rest of it. Every bowl in your house mysteriously disappears on Thanksgiving, I’m convinced. Every aunt multiplies and every mother ages ten years. All fathers test their capacity for enjoying football and cousins who you never knew existed come out of the woodwork to steal your food.
Then, after the worst day of your life you go around a table and play Miss America for a while. It’s horrible. Awful. A sad excuse for a holiday. At least Halloween is honest. We fulfill our twisted human need for gore all while collecting candy from strangers like a kidnapping marathon.
Not to mention its racist implications. We all know not to dress up as Pocahontas for Halloween, but wait three weeks and now every Kindergarten class is divided into pilgrim hats and paper headdresses for a Thanksgiving play.
We seriously let those kids go out there and re-enact a completely made up event. Sure, “it’s no big deal,” but as soon as the play gets edited for accuracy the kids in the headdresses aren’t going to be very happy.
There’s a video circling the online stratosphere lately of a teacher, donning a Native American headdress, performing what must be the most offensive dance to grace any eyeballs unfortunate enough to see it. She claps and hollers like a prejudiced caricature in paisley pants as horrified students look at this train wreck, laughing to ease the pain.
I’m as outraged as anyone, but boy would I love to take a walk in her mind. If a genie came down to Earth and gave me three wishes, one would most certainly go towards figuring out what this poor woman was thinking.
What is it like to be a forty year old teacher, criminally underpaid, spending what little you do make on paisley pants and an offensive headdress, then purposely scarring thirty five sixth graders for life? Where did she get the pants? The headdress? Did she practice such a dance? All questions I will lay awake at night and ponder.
Let me be honest for a moment: this hit piece on a well documented disaster of a holiday is not going to blow any minds. It sucks. You know it, I know it, and any history major knows it graphically.
I’m just here performing my civic duty, joining the choir of voices all singing the same song. God bless America, except for the bad parts.