So, it is Sunday and I am not at church. That is because I am the biggest party pooper in the church. Yep, I said it. I am a Thanksgiving Party Pooper. Today marks the annual Thanksgiving Potluck and Pageant by the wee ones of the church. It isn't the potluck that keeps me home, although I am not a lover of mystery food. No, it is the represented pageantry put on by the little children under the direction of my very good friend and Sunday School Teacher.
They do this program out of the UU curriculum Holy Days and Holidays that is about Native Americans. It is meant to show our thoughtfulness to the true origins of the holiday. It is so far off base it makes my skin crawl: sharing, singing, tobacco smoking happy Native Americans (I believe when it was done when I was in RE it was Indians - so that gives you a bit of the political incorrectness.)
Now, lets see what MY Pageant would look like:
Entering from the kitchen to the front of the Fellowship: A happy family of Native Americans. They are walking through the fields on their way to fetch water and fish.
Coming from the back of the Fellowship are some sick, greedy, tyrants - the French, English, and Spanish. They are hungry and tired - and looking for gold.
They see the Native Americans and yell, "Halt Indians we are here to take your lands, pollute your waters, and steal your women. Hand them over."
The Native Americans not understanding but seeing a band of sickly people show them to the water where they can fish for food. The Tyrants give them blankets that have small pox and the children wrap themselves in them as they are unaccustomed to such poorly manufactured weaving and are interested in how it would feel. They fall over dead.
At the site of their dead children the Native Americans are filled with grief and do not see the Tyrants putting SOLD signs on all the land around them.
The Tyrants then march the Native Americans through the land to the least acceptable land and give them a pitiful stipend, strip them of any power, and give them alcohol to fuel their despair.
The End.
Oh, I know what you are thinking, I am a horrible Debbie Downer. I don't care. I can't willingly see little white children pretending to be Native American without feeling sick - that it happens in my so called religiously liberal fellowship further makes me ill.
So, I stay home. No one wants the minstrel of remembrance and guilt at their party. Not even me.
