Daughter-Father Dance Podcast
TRANSCRIPT
Episode 11: Thanksgiving—the Awkward Holiday

[00:00:00] Jenée Arthur: [VOICEOVER] Hey everybody! Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us on this day of thanks.

And though Thanksgiving can be viewed by some as a whitewashed celebration that veils the conquest of Native Americans by the pilgrims— or, to others, reflects those wistful memories of our elementary school construction-paper hats and headdresses as we gathered together to break bread—though Dad and I touch on these things, we mostly share belly laughs in this episode, remembering some of Dad's more harrowing Thanksgivings.

I personally love Thanksgiving, mostly because it entails two of my favorite things—food and family.

So with that, grab another plate of cranberry sauce and a beverage and have a listen.

[00:00:50] Jenée Arthur: Like what you and I consider it a beautiful time to be with family and give thanks. But some people see it as "what are we celebrating? The hostility of the white people against the Indians?

[00:01:00] Gene Arthur: Well, okay. Well taken. First of all, in order to understand the things that, of hostility and this and that, you've got to find out where they're getting their information, what's the evidence of the proclamation that this or that took place.

[00:01:18] Jenée Arthur: Sure. But hang on Dad, before we go down that road—do you see or do you ever hear those things? That Thanksgiving is a mixed emotion holiday?

[00:01:26] Gene Arthur: No, I've never had that in my life. Growing up as a child that I can remember, uh, celebrating Thanksgiving...I really don't remember celebrating Thanksgiving the way we do it now until I married your mother and we started our family Thanksgiving celebrations. I don't even remember in the orphanage, if that was a big deal. It might've been, but I wasn't aware of it. It wasn't a special occasion,

[00:01:56] Jenée Arthur: I think you and I focus on agreement on this, that this is a beautiful holiday that regardless of whoever rewrote history or didn't rewrite history, because that's the thing, Dad—in our media, in our news gathering, in our world. Anything that's historically documented is contingent on its source, the person whom documented it... and because we are human, I think everything is suspect now. You know? It's like the only thing I can count on is my coming from within, not from without coming in—because the information I get from without isn't reliable.

[00:02:38] Gene Arthur: Okay. I want to jump in there. You've got to think about —Where's the evidence of why people are saying what they're saying. What's the root cause of why they're doing it.

[00:02:48] Jenée Arthur: The intention.

[00:02:50] Gene Arthur: I think if you say it's perspective, maybe someone wants to change the perception. They want to incite or they want to arouse friction or division.
Why some of us come up with a negative narrative about Thanksgiving...

[00:03:12] Jenée Arthur: or about anything

[00:03:13] Gene Arthur: but we're talking about Thanksgiving giving. Thanks.

[00:03:16] Jenée Arthur: Right, right, right.

[00:03:17] Gene Arthur: So, uh, maybe these people have nothing to be thankful for because maybe they've had bad luck. Maybe no one's loved them or shown them affection or friendship or things they should be thankful for.

There again, Née, I have to revert back to the Christian idea when God himself became a human being to show us the way. If we would think back to the original intent of God's plan for mankind, division was only there because of a celestial being that God had given a free will, as well as to human beings, they disobeyed, and that being chose not to serve.

[00:04:07] Jenée Arthur: Oh boy. The Fallen Angel is always an interesting subject in my brain. If you've listened to previous episodes, you know how I feel about this purported figure. I've never understood why this story got so inflated, actually creating the original ue and them narrative, if you will.

Why isn't God waiting for his fallen angel the way the father of the prodigal son watched and waited for his?

Oy, this like politics and religion is something I'm definitely not bringing up at the Thanksgiving table this year

[00:04:38] Gene Arthur: That good and evil /right and wrong /holy and unholy has existed since we as far back as human beings can imagine.

Why do some of us gravitate towards that negativity? Of running to, well, this is what really happened. Okay. What really happened? Give me your evidence of what really happened and all of the circumstances involved in that evidence, not just a soundbite.

[00:05:09] Jenée Arthur: Well, like you're citing the fall of your favorite foe.

And, you know, I think about when I was in kindergarten... I remember Little Bunny Foo Foo and you thought you authored that and somebody found it...

[00:05:18] Gene Arthur: Mmmhmm

[00:05:19] Jenée Arthur: And that was a made up nursery song, right? So there are all kinds of things that people write that are proving a point. That point being what I learned in kindergarten or from you, was that you're not mean to people or the fairy godmother's gonna turn you into a goon.

[VOICEOVER] My dad believes he made up that song and sang it to me so much that someone heard it and published it. I mean, it could have happened.

When I was in Ms. Campbell's kindergarten class, we performed this song for the parents at a small class assembly. Before the assembly, we were tasked with drawing what we imagined a goon to look like.

I mean, what is this creature called a goon? The fact that this word even exists in this story lends even more credence to Dad's assertion that he authored it. It just sounds like one of the made-up words Dad would come up with.

Well, my poster of my drawing of a goon looked like a mass of pubic hair waving with mittened hands, eyes, a mouth and huge clown feet.

Yeah. Make of that what you will.

[00:06:21] Jenée Arthur: I feel like so much history and the way mankind has proven points is through storytelling... and making a living as a storyteller, I know that to be true. So that's even, you know—and I know this is frustrating to you as an indoctrinated Catholic, when I don't want to take scripture at face value. Here in lies, you know, the struggle of what to believe. What's real? And I think the only thing that I can say is real is what's inside me, not what's outside me.

[00:06:56] Gene Arthur: That's part of what I was trying to remember what you were saying. Okay. If I hear you, right. You're saying, uh, you really take scripture. Um, yeah, maybe so. Okay. I'm not sure. That's been recorded, it's been printed and it's been circulated and things have come from the original manuscripts and the church put the Bible together, you know, 385 to 405 in a book form.

Well, who were they? Why did they pick these books and not others? All that stuff. Well, okay.

[00:07:29] Jenée Arthur: You’re reading my mind!

[00:07:33] Gene Arthur: okay. You you've got to. Put some faith in history in order to understand history, if we don't believe what is actually recorded prior to our own 10 and a hand and writing on paper, you may very well not believe what your birth certificate says on it.

You may very well not be leaving. What your mother and father told you about grandparents or your great-grandparents. You gotta have faith in what you read in order to understand that you were born on a certain day, a certain time, and people were there and they witnessed that. Well, use a birth certificate as the declaration of independence or scripture or the diary of Anne Frank.

Whatever you read, you got to say, I accept this. I believe that I see what caused this and that. I understand it.

[00:08:40] Jenée Arthur: Well, if you're making a point and I hear you, and I think what's interesting, and this is why I think, you know, I have to just go internally rather than turn to sources because you even site that you need to have evidence— while there are so much historically in our faith [for which]we have very little evidence.

Where you made a great point just now, is there's a certain level of faith in anything you read.

And I think it goes back to—a little bit— of faith being very much rooted in what we want to believe. Right? We have faith in things we want to be real, and I'm very suspect to most things I read. And especially if someone's going to claim it as "This is it, there is no other truth, but this, this is fact— it happened this way."

I think we're getting off on tangents. Um, and I think they're good ones. I think they're, they have merit, but what I want to come back to is the focus on this week and recognizing Thanksgiving as what you and I thankfully agree on. And that this a day of celebration to me... it's never, other than making sketches as a kid, it's never been about pilgrims and Indians. Nor a cornucopia of, you know, vast amounts of food back in the 1600s. It's been about being with my family and giving thanks for the many blessings. And I think if I had to simplify that, that's all it needs to be. That's enough. You know, I don't need to go back and dredge up a story that could have happened this way, or it could have happened that way. I wasn't there. And it doesn't really matter because the truth is when I sit down on Thursday and give thanks for my beautiful family—that's what matters.

[00:10:19] Gene Arthur: That's hallmark or Mayberry. That's very pleasant and that's actual and it's factual. That's what we do on Thanksgiving. We are thankful. We're not regretful.
We're not spiteful.

Thanksgiving could cause divisions in families because maybe family members who were invited to come home for Thanksgiving, they don't want to be home because they're mad at so-and-so and this and that. Someone was supposed to come home because the family tradition is that we give thanks for what we've got, because your father worked his ass off and your grandfather worked his ass off to build this company—and you we're all of us are benefiting from the results of their blood, sweat, and tears. By golly, we're going to be thankful for that. To me, that's the extreme opposite of what our family does.

[00:11:13] Jenée Arthur: Well, it's so funny that you bring that up because it's hilarious to me. And, you know, I know that whoever...some of these people that listen to this podcast are probably like “gawww”, because I'm not always sympathetic or sensitive to things— because memes on social media before Thanksgiving are hilarious. And they talk about just how fraught with like anxiety Thanksgivings are for some families, because they don't want to be together. They know that Uncle Johnny's going to talk about their conservative right-wing blah, blah, blah, or sister Sally is going to talk about, you know, her uber-liberal—whatever it is. Right? Like it becomes this sort of highly anticipated, "we're going to get in fights because of politics and religion"— which always is kind of funny as a social media meme, but it's kind of tragic if you think about it. And I don't, I don't have reference for it cause that's not how our Thanksgivings are .

[00:12:09] Gene Arthur: That Thanksgiving at Deborah's family home. There's something I just thought of. First of all, when we were all standing up around the dinner table and someone said, "Let us pray and give thanks." And then everybody started grabbing the person next to him's hand. Well, you know, I want to check out when that happens because I'm not somebody who's going to be holding two different people's hands and then wanting to express what I'm thankful for. I'm really not very thankful at that moment because of the situation, but then you have to voice some polite, sweet, syrupy thing that you're so thankful for. You might be saying, "I'm thankful my hemorrhoids aren't bothering me right now."

[00:12:58] Jenée Arthur: I don't remember seeing your face, but I remember you afterwards, like, "Geez." Because there were like 16 people that had to say their thing or something, and you were just like, oh, get me out of here.

But if you'll also remember, you guys had such a great Thanksgiving. Remember Lisa's brother-in-law and sister-in-law playing the guitar and you got to...

Deborah and I even left and went over to Sonny and Ashley's and you guys were like, "No, we're gonna stay here. We're having so much fun." And we're like, "What?"

That's my favorite, Dad. That's my favorite memory — you having to do a Kumbaya moment with the whole family— and not even your own family, a family, people you didn't even know.

[00:13:37] Gene Arthur: Your Mom and I didn't go with you and Deborah, because we thought we were going to run into the same thing over there. And we might as well just suck it up where we were.

[00:13:47] Jenée Arthur: [LAUGHTER] Oh my God. That is even...

[00:13:52] Gene Arthur: The truth comes out. And remember the Thanksgiving at, uh, Sunny's house. Oh my God. The thermostat and the house was at 62 degrees. I was underdressed and wondering, "These people have this so cold in here, you can hang meat." and, uh, they are just acting as if they're so comfortable and enjoying this. And I thought, "Good Lord."

[HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER]

I was anxious to get outside just so I could let the sun warm me up from that house. It was like, "oh my gosh, don’t these people have any heat? [LAUGHTER] It was horrible. [LAUGHTER]

[00:14:36] Jenée Arthur: [VOICEOVER] In case you're wondering, I can't breathe,I'm laughing so hard.

[00:14:45] Gene Arthur: You're remembering aren't you?

[00:14:47] Jenée Arthur: [LAUGHTER] I'm so remembering Dad. You [inaudible talking]

I can't wait for them to hear this podcast.

Okay. Well, I don't know where to go for there. That was so good.

[00:15:01] Gene Arthur: If I was going to use the vernacular of your brother, Jason, "It was so f*#ing cold in here. You can see your breath!" [LAUGHTER] That's how I felt, anyway.

[00:15:15] Jenée Arthur: Oh, that's good. You should have Julie Turner the thermostat down at Thanksgiving just to, just to reminisce. Oh, that's awesome.

[VOICEOVER] So no matter what you think of the history of this day, come back to the moment since, you know, 'now' is really all we have. The past is the past. Let's do better than our ancestors' past. The future doesn't exist yet. So enjoy the 'now' with your friends, your family, or with yourself.

No matter what today is for you, may something magical and wonderful unfold just by our acknowledging those things for which we are most grateful.

Now it's time for some delicious food to "get in my belly."

I'm thankful for you as a listener.

See you next time.

Division is Optional