Thanksgiving: A time to come together rather than pull apart
I sometimes think of American history and society like a teeter totter, pivoting over the course of time between unity and disunity. The American Thanksgiving is a good example of this. While celebrated today as a moment of togetherness, it wasn’t always this way.
As most certainly know, the first Thanksgiving happened in 1621, just a year after the Pilgrims on the Mayflower disembarked at Plymouth Rock. I’m especially tied to that moment as two of my ancestors were on that ship. Mary Chilton was supposedly the first European woman to step ashore at what would become a Massachusetts landmark. Mary Allerton was the last surviving passenger – and lived her entire life in Plymouth.
So, for me, the connection to Thanksgiving is personal. I wonder if those two Marys shared in that first meal – and what they would have thought as the original meaning of unity morphed into what many see as a historical stain in the country’s evolution, and its inevitable disunity.
Indeed, while Thanksgiving was a meal shared among the first European settlers and the Wampanoags, shortly thereafter, war and violence escalated and our sordid history of how this country was founded and the Native American peoples who paid the price was set in stone.
It wasn’t until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln, at the suggestion of Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, made Thanksgiving a national holiday, in order to bring his North together and eventually, help heal wounds in the North and the South with this common holiday built on unity.
And while I am certainly not a proponent of omitting history no matter how painful or unsettling, I recognize the importance of what President Lincoln did: create an opportunity to come together and be better as a result. Certainly in today’s America where political strife has never been stronger and the divides among us seem too great to manage at times, I think it is essential that we build these bridges more than ever before.
At my company, we work hard each and every day to give everyone the opportunity to connect and grow together, united in our common goal. From daily huddle ups, to Friday game days, Thursday “Coffee with the CEO,” quarterly Town Halls, a monthly “moment of meditation,” and a monthly “Coffee with your colleagues,” we diligently and purposely bring people together despite our virtual divide. We have team members located in eight countries, spread across many time zones. To grow as a company, it is essential we understand and support each other, and I have found these touchpoints to do just that.
In my home, I carry the same mentality. What is divorce but dividing the family? How do you keep unity despite the essence of the act? In my family, we still have Sunday dinners all together, where my daughter helps mom and dad make dinner, set the table, and clean up. We go to events together like Bluey Live or The Nutcracker. And we will all celebrate Thanksgiving together with close friends, who despite “’social norms,” still support our family, who might be different, but have no less love for each other.
Was it uncomfortable for America to celebrate those first Thanksgivings in a post Civil War world? I imagine it was! Cousin John fought for the north and now is crashing Meemaw’s dinner table in Georgia? The tensions must have been high, but the purpose of the holiday must have been greater. The Pilgrims and Native Americans themselves saw the value of reaching across the table to bring two very different sides together.
This Thanksgiving, whether you voted blue or red, whether you work in person or virtual, and whether you find yourself married, divorced, in a partnership or single, let’s work on finding something that I see as far too lost: unity.
Happy Thanksgiving!
