By Paul Varnell

According to tradition, our Pilgrim ancestors celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621 to give thanks for their survival to the god they came to America to worship freely. They prepared a small feast of native game and crops they had raised and invited the local Indians, as they were then called, to join them in appreciation for the helpful advice they had provided.

Thanksgiving used to be a major holiday. Experimentalist composer Charles Ives even made “Thanksgiving or Forefathers Day” one of the four holidays he depicted in the “Holidays” symphony he composed early in the last century. But it has become decreasingly significant over time as Christmas has expanded Borg-like to include more time.

First there was the designation of “the day after Thanksgiving” that was taken to mark the beginning of “the Christmas shopping season.” Franklin Roosevelt even moved Thanksgiving from the fourth Thursday of November to the third during the Depression to make a longer Christmas shopping season, as if spending more money were somehow a great idea for Americans who were struggling financially.

In any case the Christmas season now begins—when? Stores have already begun their pre-Christmas sales markdowns and, as in recent years past, some radio stations began playing Christmas songs and carols full-time by the second week of November. Pretty soon, Christmas will expand to absorb Halloween.

However that may be, does Thanksgiving have any meaning left besides giving people an excuse to get about as stuffed as the traditional turkey itself? The colloquial designation of Thanksgiving as “turkey day” seems designed to leach all of the traditional meaning from the day, as it were somehow embarrassing to allude to its original significance. Do we thank anyone? For anything?

Since I view all religions as just pretty myths, I am not going to urge you to thank the god of your choice. Do that if it makes you feel virtuous. But it seems to me that there are people closer at hand whom one might thank, and if the original religio-political meaning of Thanksgiving has been largely lost, we ought to be able to create some new relevance for it.

For instance, we could take the opportunity to thank friends who have helped us in various ways during the past year, colleagues at work who were helpful, people who inspired us (if anyone did), people we learned from. I thought of listing some of mine here, but that could make for a dull column for everyone else, so let’s just say that there are several people I know I should thank.

We could all thank our parents who gave us our start in life and with any luck provided useful guidance. Some parents do not at first handle learning of our homosexuality well, but they are no doubt influenced by whatever the prevailing view of homosexuality was when they were young. Try to be understanding. Usually they only want the best for you by their lights.

If you have a partner, thank him or her for what he or she has contributed to your life and your happiness.

If there are people you remember who provided valuable support and helpful advice back when you were coming out or who, whether they realized it or not, were useful “role models” on how to negotiate this new self-understanding, consider thanking them too. Do this sooner rather than later: Too many of the people who served those functions for me 35-40 years ago are now dead and it is too late.

Since World AIDS Day is coming up shortly, you might be either thankful that you did not become infected with HIV, or if you are HIV-infected thankful that you survived into an era when protease inhibitors are able to keep people alive for a prolonged period of time. You probably are not going to call up some AIDS researcher to thank him or her, but at least be aware of your indebtedness to their work.

None of this involves giving anyone a gift. In fact some of the routine gift-giving, as at Christmas, is designed to substitute for a sincere and deeply felt appreciation—or to fake it entirely. I do not doubt that most people would prefer a heartfelt expression of thanks. But for many of us that is hard to express.

There we have it, my reformulation of Thanksgiving. My aim is to give some sort of meaning to a holiday that has been largely drained of meaning, to put new wine into America’s oldest bottles. If you can preserve any of the original meaning of Thanksgiving, do so. But that may no longer be plausible for most people.

Some of Paul Varnell’s previous columns are posted at the Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.org). His e-mail address is pvarnell@aol.com.