Right or Wrong: Let us give thanks

First appeared on November 25, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Let us give thanks. Thanks to the Pilgrims with their drab frock coats and blunderbusses. Thanks to the natives who showed this desperate band of immigrants the tricks they would need to survive a brutal winter. Things like how to grow corn and track deer and the best places to find cheap gas and cigarettes.

And let us not forget the turkeys. A bird so good we eat him only once a year. Poor souls, who will, by the millions, give themselves up for us to celebrate the legendary triumphs of our ancestors. So how can it be that all this pomp and circumstance could be based on one big lie?
How could it be everything you were taught as kid is wrong? Historical truths that seemed the cornerstones of a nation suddenly dismissed. George Washington cutting down his cherry tree and Teddy Roosevelt inventing the Teddy Bear or the fact Donald Trump’s hair is real.

And so historians, who apparently have nothing better to do than sit around trying to prove other historians wrong, tell us the Pilgrims, forever the stalwarts of purity and righteousness, were not all devout Christians. They weren’t all nice to the natives and, at least when it came to their wardrobe, they didn’t all favor fifty different shades of gray.

They spoke of a government of, for and by the people and yet early on theirs was dominated by a religious elite. There were no cranberries, sweet potatoes or pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving, which leads most 7 year olds to wonder why you just can’t order a pizza.

For you this means it’s all been for nothing. Thirty plus years of bad football and choking down dry turkey as your Uncle Randy recounts the free throws he made to win that sectional game, all this over the bass beat of your father complaining about gas prices. And for what? For what historians would have us believe is a fake holiday?

So we’re left to decide for ourselves what we accept as truth and what we question. And at 5-6, can we really believe in the Indiana Hoosiers? A team that could easily boast wins over ranked opponents in Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State and yet had dropped 6 straight before downing Maryland last week.

A team one win away from strapping on their bowling shoes. And there, at the bottom of the schedule, a familiar foe awaits. Instead of finding two teams limping into an Oaken Bucket game hoping only to finish their seasons on a high note, a victory Saturday sends Indiana to their first bowl since George W. Bush was the Commander in Chief of Strategery. Meanwhile, Purdue arrives at 2-9 trying to jab a needle the size of a javelin into Kevin Wilson’s balloon.

These are not uncharted waters for the Hoosiers. This is not a New World. Still, can up really be up and down truly down? Was the Revolutionary War really fought against the British? Or could it have been three-foot tall aliens who just happened to fight using conventional European military tactics? These are the questions we’re forced to ask ourselves when historians tell us its entirely possible Lincoln never eclipsed 5’11, using blocks of wood in his boots instead to compensate for rabid insecurities.

So on this Thanksgiving, get out there and be the master of your own destiny. Believe in the unlikely, embrace the magic of your childhood or accept the so called conventional wisdom. Either way, it’s still a free country and nobody can dispute that. In the meantime just be careful believing in the Indiana Hoosiers because, revisionist history or not, they’ve let us down one too many times before.


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams