Thanksgiving is a pretty terrible holiday to celebrate, in hindsight. The first Thanksgiving? A lie. The whole thing. There was no pumpkin pie. No peace and love. It broke my heart when I learned this for the first time ever six hours ago, and ever since, I’ve made it my goal to find a different day to celebrate that is associated with less atrocity and more… joy and love. Here are my five favorite options.
1: Columbus Day
Feb. 14, the day Columbus, Ohio was founded (the city of lovers). Without Columbus, we would never have had the… uh… well… I mean… look it’s important to me okay just make it a new holiday.
2: That time the conquistadors totally destroyed the Aztecs
If we’re going to honor times when a bunch of random guys showed up, caused a huge mess, ruined millions of lives, and lied about it, I feel like we gotta represent the OG Big Daddy of all colonialism, that one time Cortes just like, blew up geopolitics in the Americas. Unlike the first Thanksgiving, which is based on pretending that the colonialist movement was peaceful and friendly, this one just straight up admits that colonialism caused a bunch of war and bad things. But who cares, because I get four whole days off for it and an excuse to pig out on good food!
3: December something-or-other
If we wanna talk about holidays and eating, we have to recognize the four month period where the Donner Party was themselves celebrating with feasts and famine. Dec. 20, or something of that sort, is the possible date that the group of settlers resorted to cannibalizing each other to survive the winter, and if that’s not a show of humanity coming together in the face of hardship, I don’t know what is. I think we should make this our Thanksgiving replacement, and I fully expect to see “That’s a human leg, Charlie Brown” to be filmed sometime in the next six months.
4: Just make it all Christmas
In an effort to finally bring an end to the cold war on Christmas, what if we just piss everyone off by saying it’s all Christmas now? That’s right, we’re just straight up moving Christmas. Thanksgiving break? That’s just Christmas now! Christ may have been born once, but calendars are weird and I’m sure someone broke one somewhere, so we have no idea when he was really born. He could’ve been born on any day! Why not make it the last Thursday in November instead?
5: Oct. 3
If there’s one thing we oughta celebrate, it’s the day it turned out murder was declared legal in California. Yep, this one’s an O.J. Simpson joke, but this feels like the safest time to make them. Sure, he may not have been a killer when he was alive, but I can be extra certain I’m safe when he’s dead.
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