To Holiday or Not To Holiday - Part 2

As I continued my exploration into why folks choosing to not celebrate certain holidays felt sticky for me, I realized that part of that stickiness came from what I see as a subtle layer of privilege in the ability to “forego” holidays altogether. To be able to simply opt out of collective rhythms - to say “this day means nothing to me” or "I do not agree with this celebration" - requires a kind of freedom and insulation that not everyone has. It assumes we can step outside of the cultural fabric without consequence, that we have access to community structures and support systems that don’t rely on shared calendars. For many, especially those in marginalized or working-class communities, holidays may be the only sanctioned days off, the only times family can gather, rest, or express care through shared meals and rituals. And this is a big one for me, because I try to stay conscious of my own privilege and make sure my spirituality never bypasses my humanity.

In this sense, to reject holidays is, paradoxically, a luxury. It's something that can more easily be done by those who already benefit from the same colonial systems they are rejecting.

In this sense, to reject holidays is, paradoxically, a luxury. It’s something that can more easily be done by those who already benefit from the same colonial systems they are rejecting. The ability to “disengage” is often a byproduct of privilege - particularly white privilege - because for those who have long been excluded from mainstream belonging, communal rituals (even ones with complicated histories) often become spaces of reclamation, not rejection.

It’s also important to note that many Indigenous and colonized peoples do celebrate Thanksgiving - not out of denial, but in their own way. For some, it’s an act of survival and cultural continuity; for others, it’s an opportunity to tell the truth, to hold both remembrance and gratitude at once. The fact that many Native families celebrate Thanksgiving themselves shows that healing doesn’t always mean turning away. Sometimes it means transforming the narrative from within.

Myth of the First Thanksgiving

This duality - celebration and mourning coexisting in one day - mirrors life itself. Human experience has always been both joy and sorrow, beauty and grief interwoven. It feels to me that this is what ritual is meant to hold. To abandon the collective ritual altogether might mean losing one of the few remaining containers where this kind of collective emotional alchemy can occur.

...what part of it still feels alive, what part connects us back to truth, to gratitude, to community - and what part needs to die so something more honest can take its place.

Maybe the skillful practice, then, is not in rejecting the holiday but in reclaiming it. In asking what part of it still feels alive, what part connects us back to truth, to gratitude, to community - and what part needs to die so something more honest can take its place. Maybe Thanksgiving (and every holiday, really) is less about celebrating a myth and more about remembering what has been lost while choosing to keep feeding what is sacred and human.

It’s messy. But perhaps it’s supposed to be messy. The older I get, the more I believe that learning to live with that mess - to keep showing up for the rituals that bind us, even when they are flawed - is one of the deepest spiritual practices we can engage in.

So maybe the question isn’t whether we should celebrate or not celebrate, but how we might reenter the act of celebration with consciousness and care. If we are willing to stay in the tension - between gratitude and grief, between the story we were told and the truth that still aches underneath - then perhaps holidays can become portals for healing instead of performances of denial. They can become the places where we remember not only who we are but who we have been, and who we still might become if we learn to hold it all with honesty.

This, to me, feels like the next evolution of our relationship with holidays - one that asks not for purity but for presence. A willingness to keep participating while questioning, to keep gathering while grieving, to keep finding meaning even in the ruins.

It seems that no matter the era, place, or culture, humans have always found ways to mark time through celebration. We need the punctuation marks - the pauses, the gatherings, the songs and shared meals - to remind us that life is more than survival. Even in times of grief, people have lit candles, danced, cooked, and told stories because celebration is a language of continuity. It’s how we remember that life persists, that joy is still possible, and that meaning doesn’t vanish even in the shadow of suffering. Holidays have always been a form of collective remembering, an embodied rhythm that says, we are still here.

So maybe the way forward is not to discard our holidays but to compost them - to let what is false and harmful break down so something more nourishing can grow. A truer holiday might not erase history but include it, creating space for both celebration and reckoning, for gratitude and truth-telling in the same breath. It might look smaller, simpler, more rooted in the land or in quiet acts of community care rather than grand performance. But it would still be celebration - one that belongs to everyone, that acknowledges where we come from, and that helps us imagine where we could go together.

Refusing to participate might feel like protest, but it can also reiterate the very fracture we're trying to heal - the disconnection, the separation, the inability to sit in complexity together.

It’s tempting to walk away from holidays altogether - to reject what feels corrupted, commercialized, or painful. But I’ve come to see that this impulse, while understandable, can sometimes be a subtle form of emotional bypassing. When we turn away from the discomfort, we also turn away from the opportunity to engage with it, to transform it. Refusing to participate might feel like protest, but it can also reiterate the very fracture we’re trying to heal - the disconnection, the separation, the inability to sit in complexity together.

Ritual, by nature, is meant to help us metabolize what’s hard. When we discard the container instead of tending to what it holds, we lose a powerful space for reconciliation and renewal. To stay, to keep celebrating consciously , is not to deny harm but to acknowledge it; to bring light and awareness into the very places that hurt.

Maybe that’s the real invitation: not to cleanse our calendars of imperfection, but to keep showing up to the table, again and again, with gratitude, truth, and an open heart. Because perhaps healing doesn’t come from turning away - it comes from staying present long enough for something sacred to be reborn.