Families Can Come Together During the Holidays
By Jeff Thomas
Thanksgiving is a holiday that most people can celebrate. Fortunate families flock together for a big family meal. Festive talk and happy reunions mark the day. For some it is viewed as the beginning of the buying season for Christmas. Yet the underlying reason for Thanksgiving is barely noted any longer, and only schoolchildren come close to observing the notion of giving thanks and expressing gratitude. In general people often view holidays as little more than a day to take off work, but somehow Thanksgiving promises more in its very name than we tend to give it in practice.
Traditionally school children are taught that Thanksgiving commemorates the first harvest feast shared by indigenous people and settlers. Every year school kids decorate the halls and classrooms with pictures of hand turkeys and maize depicting the first celebration when the Pilgrims reportedly celebrated living through the first year and prospering. The feast element comes from this very sense of success, since the bounty the Pilgrims produced was brought to the table as proof that they had been successful in growing certain crops given them by the Indians and in either raising or successfully hunting certain domestic and wild animals. It is clear whether the settlers really had deer instead of turkey for Thanksgiving, but somewhere along the way that element was added to the celebration.
As schoolchildren smarten their schools by posting pictures, we fortify our lives by gathering around the family table and talking. In our time, days are extremely busy. Many people are too busy to spend any quality time in any significant amount. Families blur past each other going to the next engagement. Genuine talk is rare, unless some crisis arises. Thursday at the dinner table the great bounty should be abundant talk. And while those first Pilgrims may have measured success by simply surviving, then we all have issues that can be discussed, brainstormed and possibly resolved. And the children should be heard and off their screens. Holidays are more relaxed and children more likely to talk. Hopefully their goals and the family’s principles are in sync. The patriarchs and matriarchs must set high standards and goals. Through casual, fun, nonjudgmental conversation family togetherness and strength grows. So use this Thanksgiving to strengthen our family ties. And a strong family is a reason to be thankful. Strong families produce strong people.
Relax Thursday! Enjoy your family!
As we all get better, we all get better!
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu