Thanksgiving: A Reflection on Humility and Family

Thanksgiving is undoubtedly a holiday to celebrate family. It also celebrates many other things, as the name suggests. Thanksgiving is a holiday to give thanks for the things that a person has rather than to wish for more things. Accomplishments and shiny cars are not part of the essence of Thanksgiving, as these do not have the inherent humbleness expected of the holiday. This air of humility and frugality, harkening back to the days of the pilgrims and Native Americans, is probably what lead Ellen Goodman to describe the holiday as a suppressing of individualism. However, the rift between individuality and family that Goodman describes in Thanksgiving is not as deep as she makes it seem, and Thanksgiving Day is hardly the only day of the

year that a sense of family shines through in a person. Goodman misrepresents American society by so strongly emphasizing how Americans are brought up to be entirely independent from their families, and thus indicates a divide between people and their families when such a thing is unnecessary.
In the first place, America is a jumble of many cultures and backgrounds, so it is not fair to generalize all Americans as focusing entirely on individualism.

Goodman claims that "We are, after all, raised in families ... to be individuals" (Goodman 4). But is it impossible for a child to be raised to be a part of a family, not just in a family? Picture a teenage boy, the son of a Korean mother and a Caucasian father. Perhaps it is his East Asian roots speaking, but he certainly does not believe that he has been taught that his individualism defines him. If he were to act rudely in public, his parents would certainly scold him, and tell him that his actions reflect poorly on them. He is by no means released into the world and told that he can do whatever he, as an individual, feels like doing. Instead, he is supported by his family, his mother and father and siblings as well, just as he is expected to reciprocate now and in the future. Perhaps this young man is destined to grow out of this "familial" stage, but as, years later, his father asks how his first day of college was from across the dinner table, he supposes he is not ready to let go of his roots quite yet. Unless this now-college-freshman is somehow deemed un-American in heritage, it is hard to accept the individualistic upbringing as the only way to do

something.
In American society there are many cases in which the importance of the family is equal to that of the individual. Goodman claims that on "Thursday, feast day, family day, Thanksgiving day, Americans who value individualism like no other people will collect around a million tables in a ritual of belonging," as if families only come together when absolutely necessary (Goodman 3). But family is not just something that exists in the back of a person's mind, somehow turning into a real thing once a year as all its members remember it at the same time. In a stereotypical American romance movie plot, one of the two lead characters earns the anger of the others' parents, who outright refuse to sanction a marriage between the two. Said lead character then goes through all sorts of lengths to earn the approval of the parents, as this is the clearly socially acceptable thing to do in such a situation. It is not only clichéd copies of Romeo and Juliet in which the importance of family can sometimes take precedent over an individual's whims; earning the approval of a spouse's parents prior to a wedding is a long-celebrated American tradition. It is also quite touching when a soon-to-be professional athlete is drafted and, on TV, shares hugs (or, time prohibiting, smiles) with his or her parents before walking onto the stage. Likewise, contestants on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? often exchange furtive looks and hand signals with their incredibly excited family members while making million-dollar decisions. In both of these cases, though an individual is in the spotlight, they are clearly raised to it by their family. So while the family may sometimes be background characters, Family Guy would not be a very popular show if it were renamed Only Peter Griffin.
Completely separating the "individual" from the "family" presents a false misrepresentation that need not exist in reality. "Family" is simply the term for the bonds of blood and of marriage that tie individuals together. It should not be so easy to force these bonds to disappear on a daily basis. Indeed, family is seen in everyday life, be it a little brother calling to ask for a favor or the Mr. and Mrs. Goodman that are implicitly referred to in each utterance of Ellen Goodman's name. Goodman proposes that Americans have two worlds, the individual one in which "the world rewards 'the supreme importance' of the individual, the ego" and the family one in which "membership is not based on certificates but on birth" (Goodman 4). Though an old, clichéd idiom goes "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family," every American chooses at least one family member (or the lack thereof) through marriage. Beyond this, many Americans likely have companions who blur the line between friendship and family in their closeness. Especially in America, one would expect that people would use their freedom as an individual to create a personal depiction of family that defies distinction from themselves. Who is to say that these "two separate sets of demands and possibilities" cannot be merged into one (Goodman 53)? Friends, family, culture, society; rather than separate groups that a person must belong to one at a time, these can be seen as augmentations of a person that add, rather than subtract, from him or her individuality.
Individuals are called individuals not because they must exist exclusively individually, but because they are not the same as others. As such, individuals get to choose their own path, and formulate their own conception of family and self and whatever else they want. Perhaps individual is a poor word to use for this, as it suggests a separateness that is completely unnecessary; the more typical term is "person." Regardless, the lesson is the same: Americans, and people in general, need not condemn themselves to an endless commute between the two worlds that Goodman describes. Though simply combining them is a simplistic solution to a complex problem. It is reasonable to strive to incorporate family into individual life and vice-versa, and many people probably already do this. At the very least, having a family is something to be thankful for every day of the year.