BJ BODNAR
Opinions Writer

After taking some time to digest my Thanksgiving experience this year, I realized I hold some hostility towards the holiday and, in particular, the way in which we celebrate it.

It’s not that I have a long standing vendetta against yams or a putrid dislike for mashed potatoes, nor even that I object with vigor to the consumption of pumpkin pie. My problems with Thanksgiving are of a deeper nature and stem from the ironic, hypocritical and largely wasteful nature of the holiday.

Now, just to clarify, I want to mention that I fully recognize that as Canadians we have much in life to be thankful for. Access to food, clean water, medical care, education, justice and Katy Perry’s new album — life is good. Not for a minute would I suggest that I don’t have cause for appreciation or reason to give thanks. But I don’t see how the way in which we celebrate Thanksgiving demonstrates in any way that we are in fact thankful for any of these things.

Let’s just break it down. The typical means of celebrating North American Thanksgiving involves the purchase and preparation of about five times more food than the family is capable of eating at one sitting. The food taken care of, we proceed to eat in a manner of excess and gluttony, justified only by the claim that since it is Thanksgiving, such wastefulness is somehow acceptable, even noble or gracious. Then, despite our best efforts to eat approximately three times the appropriate amount of food, we are left with heaps of leftovers, much of which will inevitably end up being thrown away.

The only part of Thanksgiving that even resembles an act of appreciation comes when the host stands up and delivers a speech as canned as the cranberry sauce, predictably alluding to the things in life we all have to be thankful for, allowing us a brief pause for self reflection before gorging on candied yams and fresh dinner rolls.

In essence, as North Americans we celebrate our day of thanks by preparing and eating a meal that directly symbolizes the excessive, self-indulged, wasteful nature that all too often characterizes our society. This shows just how out of touch we are with our good fortune and makes a mockery of the idea that we are indeed appreciative of it.

Way back when I was a youngster, I was taught that you show appreciation through your actions. Passive over-eating is not the type of thing I envision when I think of an act of appreciation. Thanksgiving should be treated as an opportunity to use the good fortune we have been given to help others who haven’t been afforded the same luxuries in life.

Considering the number of people worldwide who spent Oct. 11 struggling to survive and barely having enough to feed themselves, it seems rather decadent and ignorant of us to indulge so unapologetically in our customary Thanksgiving spread. We could instead decide to show our gratitude by giving to others who may not have nearly as much to be thankful for as we do. Donating even a fraction of the cost of a typical family’s celebratory meal could make a world of difference to someone in need, and certainly wouldn’t require much sacrifice on our part.

When Thanksgiving rolls around next year, I think we should all take some time to put the “giving” back into Thanksgiving and take a break from our usual habit of wild consumption and wastefulness. After all, we already do enough of those things the other 364 days of the year.

Dry & Toothy is a weekly critical commentary column from BJ Bodnar, who has been the recipient of the National Environmental Achievement Award, has been named to the Top 20 Under 20 in Canada and represented Canada at the World Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

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image: Flickr