A Holiday Message: Thanksgiving Day 2024

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 2 Dec 2024

Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service

28 Nov 2024 – The Thanksgiving Day holiday was first observed by colonists in New England and Canada as random days of ‘thanksgivings,’ in the form of prayers for blessings of safe journeys, military victories, or abundant harvests. Americans later more self-consciously modeled their holiday celebration after a 1621 harvest feast shared between the Wampanoag and some English colonists seeking refuge from persecution in their British homeland, becoming known as the ‘Pilgrims.’

In most North American homes, families now celebrate mainly the blessings of being together without any acknowledgement or even awareness of the historical legends surrounding the transformation of religious rituals to the national holiday known by all as Thanksgiving Day. It has become a way of giving thanks for the blessings of life without attention to the dark foundations of these breakaway British colonies, including genocidal tactics employed to clear coveted land of native peoples as well as the importation of slaves from Africa to make the land productive while cruelly abusing these workers of cotton fields and farmlands forcibly removed from their distant homelands by the most predatory crimes of early capitalism. For progressives as with some other naively celebrated holidays, most notably, Columbus Day, these celebratory occasions have increasingly become times to take note of past moral failures societal and state criminality.

This year Thanksgiving Day assumes an especially problematic character, not because of the past but because of the present. For me it is better observed in the spirit of A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE AND REMORSE. Such a dark perspective is adopted to produce creative tensions between the enjoyment of a turkey meal with the onset of deliberately induced mass starvation in the Gaza Strip among the Palestinian survivors of the Israeli onslaught of recent months, including interference with the delivery of food by international aid and relief workers. As well this year’s critical remarking of thanksgiving serves as a grim reminder of the instrumental role of the US Government in the escalation of nuclear risks and rejection of diplomacy in the Ukraine War. The United States, together with several NATO allies, is willing for delusional purposes to sacrifice Ukrainian lives and well-being while increasing prospects of a major war, so that it might humiliate Russia with a battlefield defeat.

By remembrance and remorse this year, we can re-endow a popular holiday with the sobriety of a hard look at our national ethos of Western global hegemony is being experienced by the disillusioned and frightened peoples of the world. Hopefully, Thanksgiving Day 2025 can be celebrated in moderate, yet mindful, good faith as the blessings of precious life for all.

__________________________________________

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.

Go to Original – richardfalk.org

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

There are no comments so far.