Make Thanksgiving Grateful Again

Choose people over politics

It’s a fixture of pre-Thanksgiving coverage at news outlets.

The “post-election-how-to-get-along-with-your-politically-opposed-relatives-over-the-holidays” column.

Opinion writers get an early gift in the month of November. Thanksgiving, one of the biggest family holidays of the year, falls only a few weeks after our every-other-year Election Days. That means that every couple years, columnists can just file an updated version of the same piece that features tips on how to survive hours of confinement on the same premises as family members who voted for Candidate X or Party Y.

The proximity of the two days is actually coincidental. In 1845, as a concession to farmers, Congress established Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Tuesday was the day of the week that worked best with farmers’ market schedules (and everyone’s Sunday churchgoing schedule). And early November was the one time of year before winter that didn’t interfere with the crop cycle.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, was officially proclaimed as a holiday by President Lincoln in 1863, during the Civil War, as a way to promote national unity. The date Lincoln chose for the celebration, which was inspired by the harvest feast that the Pilgrims shared with their Wampanoag tribe allies in 1621, was November 26, a Thursday in the final week of the month.

Successive presidents also proclaimed national days of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. Finally, a joint congressional resolution in 1941 officially designated the fourth Thursday in November as the holiday’s official date.

The juxtaposition on the calendar of the two days is thus an accident but a happy and symbolic one. After a hostile period of partisan, tribal conflict, the two opposing sides have the opportunity to sit down together and break bread, while mutually giving thanks for the bounty of their shared land.

In Georgetown, Del., a few miles down the road from me and my rather well-known neighbor, opposing candidates actually come together on the Thursday following Election Day for Return Day, a local holiday that dates back to 1812 and is only observed in the southernmost county in the state, Sussex County. Candidates, voters and other onlookers gather as official election returns are read and certified. Former campaign rivals arrive at the ceremony together in carriages and on floats as part of a parade that also features marching bands and fire trucks. Leaders of the opposing parties bury an actual hatchet. Schools and public offices close at noon. There’s even an ox roast, a local tradition.

Somewhat oddly, the biennial observance never spread to the rest of the state or other parts of the country. Perhaps that’s for the best. In Georgetown, the ceremonial hatchet burying is a quirky, if somewhat culturally appropriative, civic tradition, a slice of small-town Americana.

However, both in the past and especially now, there are many parts of the country where it would be inadvisable to give recent campaign foes access to sharp blades when they are in close proximity to each other. Otherwise, those locations may also witness hatchets being buried—in the back of folks’ skulls.

Still, Thanksgiving is three weeks after Election Day, not two days. Emotions shouldn’t be as raw as they often still are on Return Day. Theoretically, by the end of the November, we ought to be able to sit down and come to some mutual acceptance of election results with our counterparts from the other side, at least the ones that are in our own families.

But, in the wake of the 2024 election, many are challenging this ethos. On Nov. 8, only three days after votes were cast, Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Amanda Calhoun told MSNBC viewers that, if they have Trump voters in their families, that “it’s completely fine not to be around those people and to tell them why” you’re ostracizing them. “If you are going through a situation where you have family members or you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you, that are against your livelihood,” she stated, “then it’s completely fine… to say, ‘I have a problem with the way that you voted because it went against my very livelihood, and I’m not going to be around you this holiday, I need to take some space for me.’”

The following week on “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin backed Calhoun’s perspective. Many people, she stated, feel that their MAGA relatives “voted not only against their families but against them” individually. “When people feel that someone voted not only against their families but against them and against people that they love, I think it’s okay to take a beat," she asserted.

The same week, columnist Andrea Tate announced on HuffPost that, to punish her naughty Trump-supporting husband and his Trump-supporting family, she was canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s right—because the election didn’t break her side’s way and because her spouse and in-laws had the temerity to choose a different side, she preemptively took both of the major, family holidays off the table this year.

Soon after Calhoun and Tate’s declarations went viral, a social media trend ensued where women who had supported Harris for president began to post look-at-me testimonials about boycotting Thanksgiving or disinviting Trump-supporting relatives. Some even talked of even banishing such family members from their lives altogether.

Fortunately, this kind of politics-drunk narcissism is far from majority behavior. In 2018, the non-profit research organization More in Common found that two-thirds of Americans were worn out by our all-consuming partisan politics. And, even in 2018, study participants called out the damaging effects of political polarization on their relationships, including with family. “A clear majority feel exhausted by the us-versus-them conflict which has spread from far-away debates in Congress to bitter disputes among neighbors, coworkers, and even family members at the Thanksgiving table,” More in Common co-founder Tim Dixon wrote in a press release about the study.

Perhaps one remedy, at least for Thanksgiving, is to recenter the occasion around its original purpose: gratitude. Be grateful, not partisan.

Be thankful that you have a life and people in it. Be thankful for the individuals in your life and in your family, no matter whom they voted for and what their values are. Be thankful that you have a family that accepts you no matter whom you vote for and what your values are. Be thankful that you live in a country where you can vote freely and fairly and that you can practice and proclaim your values without obstruction. Be thankful that you live in a country where political adversaries are at least more likely to symbolically bury a hatchet in the ground rather than each other’s skulls.

And be thankful for days like Thursday that remind you of all that you have to be thankful for, even when political self-absorption tempts you to take it for granted or even throw some parts of it away.

Portions of this post have been adapted from my book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.

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