Thanksgiving

Not pumpkin nor turkey; it is thanksgiving, dude! The Puritan’s celebration was one of gratitude. What was ritualized was the affirmation of life, one’s own and the neighbors, of bountiful harvest, weathering nature’s harshness, and asserting the general trustworthiness of existence.

The ritual is religious. When a community establishes a practice that solidifies into a tradition going beyond the limits of a generation, it becomes a reflexive act that invites subsequent generations to act out the prescribe moves before asking the question of “what for,” or “why.” The doing does not require a conscious knowing. Thus, we have the turkey and the pumpkin without requiring an explication of meaning.

Jiu Yi Ba, an Oct. 18 historical ritual is observed here in Dong Bei. On that day, at 9am, sirens in Shenyang blare for five minutes to remind everyone what a duplicitous race the Japanese are after what they did in 1931. On this day, the Made in Japan railroad station in Mukden (Shenyang’s previous name) was mysteriously attacked, giving militaristic Japan the excuse to take over the region. A ritual of hate is in place.

China does not have a xie xie day save today’s commercial Thanksgiving, a shopping recycling of leftover orders from western markets. Oh, the hype is there, but the sense of gratitude is missing. “Thank You” and “I am sorry” are not phrases of social grace in casual discourse. When uttered, they merely maintain one’s face (mianzi), and retain good relations (guanxi) to those perceived to be one’s superior.

In my experience, “I am sorry” precedes the apology for “having poor English”, preempting any possible comments on language usage, somewhat akin to the lady of the house who prepares a sumptuous meal and begins by saying, “I am sorry, we do not have enough food!” The gesture protects one from untoward remarks!

Like everything else in life, the external situation never determines one’s internal stance. Gratitude is an existential resolve decided in spite of the delight and misery of normal life. In an old book from the Levant, it was the wail on whether one can sing the songs of Zion “by the rivers of Babylon” that the prophets responded to with a resounding “Yes.”

Spirit warriors at the beginning of the current era squeezed the juice out of an ignominious crucifixion to declare that death holds no dominion! We’ve messed up various aspects of that central message through the years, but our use of the Gregorian calendar bears witness to the tenacity of that singular demonstration of gracious gratitude carried from the story of the baby in the manger to the hills of Golgotha! That life still elicits loud Hosannas in many quarters!

Yolanda (Haiyan of the international winds) tested our resolve big time in our personal response to disaster. Some friends noted the absence of a “bleeding heart” tone in our literary reflections, even as body bags left untended raised accusations of neglect and incompetence, general and specific. I used the word “disconnect” as my term away from the traditional but emotive relief and aid methods of responding to the effects of Mother Nature’s belching.

I lived in the Piedmont in the late ’70s when tobacco companies tried to dissuade the medical community and the public from the notion that there is a link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. I find the same attitude when connection is made by activists from increased incidences of strong quakes and fierce winds (typhoons and tornadoes) to climate change. Society’s data bank of knowledge latches on to measures of objectivity from the positivist school of thought of a previous century that demands irrefutable connections, discards the wisdom of intuition, and ignores the lessons of experience.

Earthquakes used to happen in Manchuria once every 50 years. We’ve had six in the last three years. Climate change is not in dispute. Whether humans’ use of fossil fuel contributing to it is. It finally does not matter. It is the internal resolve that counts.

Indeed, how can one sing the songs of Zion from the rivers of Babylon? An older tall boy in my 6th grade class at SVES, transferred mid-year from an outer island, glared down on me one day after being called for disturbing others in class, and said, “Consider yourself lucky that you are a teacher.” He had a look on his face that showed an unmistakable threat with sinister delight. Echoes of that resonate in the murder of 24-year-old teacher Colleen Ritzer by her 14-year-old student Phillip Chism.

We open and close our spoken English class with a pedagogical hear-repeat ritual: “This is the day we have. We can live this day, or throw it away. This is the day we have.” Students forcefully “loud out” the lines with gusto! It appears that the Pea Eye boxer Pacman (Congressman Pacquiao) over the weekend minded his punch in Macau as well. Samar-Leyte got a lift on the thankful spirit on this one.

The preschool ritual out of Chicago’s Westside where the above came from ends with a declarative: “So let us live!” I do the same under my breath with grace and gratitude. Then I go one-step further with the folks at Hanukkah—rededicate my covenant with life!

So, to the turkey, thankshanukkah!