by Amy Czechorosky

Last weekend the little flyers started coming with my deliveries of the Los Angeles Times. They all say the same thing: ‘There is no Thanksgiving in Tijuana.’

That’s right. ‘There is no Thanksgiving in Tijuana.’ Well, that’s just great. Now not only do I have to feel sad for the people in Tijuana not having decent plumbing or schools or a decent language, I have to find out they haven’t got a decent bullshit holiday either. ‘Dear Caring Friend,’ the flyers’ pitch for my money begins. Little do they know. I mean, I am caring and also a very sweet friend, but that’s not the point. I haven’t got any money for the Mexicans here in California, so how can I be expected to spring for a big Tijuana Thanksgiving?

Dear Caring Friend…. For less than the cost of a sandwich, you can provide a hungry family in Tijuana with a delicious Thanksgiving meal…. The hurt and suffering in Tijuana is heartbreaking…. We need your help to serve hundreds of emergency meals to hungry people and provide scores of food boxes to poor families….’

This is only the beginning of what’s wrong with the fourth Thursday of November. Or if you’re Canadian, the second Monday of October. Because it’s time once again to showcase the freakish need of modern people to put a public happy face on any milestone that can be marketed, it’s also time once again for me to hear about one more thing Canadians have that Mexicans don’t. I spend every day being thankful for the little I have materially and the big things I have in the greater sense, so I’ll never understand the social imperative in setting aside a holiday for enforcing that others pretend to do the same thing. Especially when most of them live their whole lives the rest of the year’except for Christmas and Hanukkah, of course’in flagrant desecration of what these holidays stand for anyway.

The flyers continue: ‘Backing up the good food, our outreach ministry focuses on solving the core problems each person is struggling with….’

What?! My meager offerings are supposed to feed families and rebuild whole lives?! ‘You gotta be kidding”that’s what my flyer to these flyer-sending people would say. Never mind that this is the same organization who used to solicit money for the Downtown Rescue Mission’they were crass enough to use the same photo of the same street person they use every year, I recognize it’and now, what, they’re trying to exploit the still very hot Latino craze, since Latinos now outnumber whites in California? The whole thing smells to me, as repellent as the gross aromas of stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce and all those other homey Thanksgivin’ fixin’s on a table by the hearth.

Yep, as far as holidays go, this one never has done much for me. First of all, I dislike almost all of the foods on a traditional Thanksgiving menu. If I’m going to ruin my figure with carbs, I’d prefer to have pasta over stuffing or potatoes any day. Eating yams is said to increase female fertility, but since any child of mine would be cursed with only slightly less neediness than those poor Tijuanans, then what’s the point? And cranberries are just disgusting all around, not the least for inspiring the name of one of the worst bands to come out of the ’90s. Really, I may have as much trouble controlling myself around food as the next gal’and believe it, boys, even the most emaciated girls lie about food as consistently as you lie about sex’but I’d even rather listen to a Cranberries song than eat turkey or any of that other stuff on Thanksgiving. And I call it a bullshit holiday because it’s the one most obviously just a blatant excuse for people to do other things for it, like shopping, leaving early from work, or watching football. Apparently no one cares that the word is ‘holiday’ because these used to be ‘holy days,’ not originally intended for the overstuffed to have more excuses to shove food down their gobs or the privileged to have more excuses to buy tacky things they’re never even going to use.

Or donate to anyone.

It isn’t even known for sure that turkey was on the first Thanksgiving table. In fact, the Pilgrims almost didn’t have any food at all. The crops of wheat, peas and barley they had brought with them to the New World failed before they’d even been here a full year. So it’s a lucky thing actually, despite the scalpings that were to come, that there were some Native Americans on the land when the Pilgrims first arrived. The Wampanoag tribe, especially its most famous member, Squanto, were kind enough to show the Pilgrims how to plant and sustain corn, and when there wasn’t enough food to offer to every Indian who had shown up for the first feast, a chief named Massasoit even ordered some of his tribesmen to provide their own reinforcements.

So isn’t it hard to believe after hearing this that there was any war between the white man and the red man at all? I know I don’t understand it. There was even a peace treaty entered into by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe that was never broken during the lifetimes of those who agreed to it, which was news to me after everything I’d heard in recent years about the land rape of Native Americans. I also came across a very interesting description of events, at
cwis.org, that was written by a Quebec native who claims heritage from Indians who fought both with and against the Pilgrims for land. Even if you don’t find it interesting, you will at least admit it’s a welcome respite from the usual stuffing; you know, Native Americans good and Pilgrims bad. Or did I just drink so much in college that I’ve mixed up my grade-school history lessons? Either way, present-day obfuscation contributed to my needing to learn a lot about the occasion, including the fact that it wasn’t even a yearly tradition among the Pilgrims but only gained importance after the Puritans joined them here. Perhaps the funniest thing, though, is that Great Britain doesn’t even celebrate Thanksgiving today, although the Pilgrims and Puritans themselves were British subjects.

The Microsoft Network’s online encyclopedia, Encarta, calls the modern Thanksgiving observance ‘a celebration of domestic life, centered on the home and family.’ It salutes bounty of all kinds, but mainly as it regards the staples of food and shelter. Well, that’s all fine and good for the people who have those things, but what about the ones who don’t? The plight of the poor and their miseries is an obvious example, but what about all of the middle-class kids with hideous families and so few opportunities to apply their expensive college educations that they can’t even afford their own places to live? Maybe someone should spend this time of year thinking about the disenfranchised American white kids for a change.

But like that’s ever going to happen in this day and age. Nope, its rampant hypocrisy deems that no white kid could possibly be as screwed in life as someone with a last name that’s harder to pronounce, so on we less fortunate white kids go, nagged every November by the suffering of those we both do and don’t know have it rougher than we do, and with all that crappy Thanksgiving harvest to make us feel even guiltier.

However, I would be lying if I said I was completely pissed off about Thanksgiving in 2004. I seriously feel very lucky to have my family and friends, not to mention vast intelligence and beauty, and also to be a North American without having to live in Canada or Mexico. And during the course of my research, I was touched to discover the Web site of a group that seems genuinely committed to the ideals Thanksgiving was founded on, at
thanksgiving.org. Check it out if you want your heart to feel as warm as a holiday pie’now those I like. But the thing for which I’m probably most thankful is that Wienerschnitzel, just in time for the holidays, has begun to offer again my favorite seasonal menu item, the Polish Sandwich. It’s a Polish sausage on rye bread with mustard, Swiss cheese and a pickle, and I looooove sausage, rye bread, mustard, cheese and pickles. So not only can I eat one of those while everyone else gets stuck with Thanksgiving rations, I can make it a real Polish sandwich and take off all the bread to send to those hundreds of needy families in Tijuana.

Oh, won’t they be thankful for me!