Why not have a Trini Thanksgiving?
A national day of Thanksgiving is not so far-fetched. After all, Thanksgiving is American, and we're clearly enthralled with America. American accents creep into our speech and music. American brands fill our stores, American films fill our screens, and American fast foods fill our bellies. We favour American apples, grapes, and peaches instead of our local fruits like guava, pommecythere, pommerac etc,
Our constables are officers, CVs are resumes, and liming is hanging out. We have American style gangs, and policing—complete with sirens, and shoot-outs. We celebrate Halloween, not even adapted to local folklore, politics and current events.So, how have we NOT copied Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is worth copying
And I'm not "ponging" our copying culture, so much as accepting it and asking a logical question. If we're copying America so much, why not copy something that could do us some good as well? America's Thanksgiving holiday is the best public holiday on the U.S. calendar because it has no commercial or religious agenda.
It's just an honoured tradition of bringing family and friends together, regardless of politics, religion, gender, social status, to give thanks for everything good in their lives. Wow! Isn't that worth copying? Why don't we do the same here in TnT? After all
...we could soooo make a better meal
Imagine what a Trini household would create for a Thanksgiving meal? We wouldn't be bound to a dry, tasteless turkey. How would we innovate? Every family could invent their own Thanksgiving meal tradition, or do something different every year. I salivate just thinking of it.
It's good to be grateful
A national day of Thanksgiving would be an answer to the well-worn local phrase that describes how powerless we feel—"Whah yuh go do?"
Well, there actually is at least one thing every one of us can do, and that is to give thanks for whatever is working in our lives.
Because an interesting thing about life is this: What you pay attention to, grows. In other words, if you fixate on what's wrong, you'll get more of the same … and this is clearly what's happening to us now.
Everyone and everything is incompetent or corrupt. That's our default position, and we actively seek confirming evidence. This feeds national moods of apathy, anger and frustration; it also makes it hard for our good people, to even try to do better.
Let's stop feeding our attention to our worst demons, and instead serve it to our better angels by acknowledging the good, giving thanks for the good, and encouraging more good to grow in our country. After all, it essentially comes down to a choice.
Funny thing ...
If we did create a national day of Thanksgiving, even if unofficial, we would be using our propensity to copy something foreign to appreciate the value of what's local. That would be a cute irony, wouldn't it?
What do you say?
Would you like to support a positive initiative to help the national mood? We won't be so boldfaced to ask for another holiday, but we could change the date every year to fall on a Saturday or Sunday of one of those long weekends we have every year.
Take the poll by clicking here.About the author
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