Oh Thanksgiving. The turkey; the pumpkin pie; the parade; the sweet potatoes slathered in brown sugar; the kids’ table and the adults’ table; the I-need-to-unbuckle-my-belt-and-relax-with-a-glass-of-wine aura of it all; and helping my mom wash and stuff a fat turkey carcass all day in our mother-daughter aprons while my brothers imitate vegetables in front of the football game.

So maybe I have a little beef with Turkey Day, despite its yum factor. Maybe this is because it’s the most obvious glimpse of a society that still relegates women to the kitchen. Of course, it doesn’t have to be and isn’t for some people, but it’s certainly founded on sexist ideals worth noting.

I remember making construction paper masterpieces in kindergarten. Among my artistic works were the Mayflower, Squanto, a pilgrim and a cornhusk. Why didn’t we have a pattern for the woman slaving over the wild turkey while the Indian and pilgrim boys tossed a pig intestine together?

Apparently the women were too busy to watch the game — and be included in the snapshots of history.

As we all know, the story of Thanksgiving is clothed in mythology, similar to many holidays. The famous meal deduces the European takeover of land that belonged to other people into a nice afternoon barbeque. The oldest American holiday has fostered the normality of this country’s oppressive attitude toward women. Basically, our harmless-seeming November food shoveling validates the radical philosophy of Christians in the 1600s. No offense to any pilgrim fanatics out there, but it’s kind of crazy that we celebrate a holiday based on a sexist and racist society.

So we might all love pumpkin pie (although last year I didn’t have any, and maybe that’s where my bitterness comes from), but it behooves us to know why we eat it. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, but something about it always irked me. Maybe because I don’t like to cook that much, and although no one made me, I always felt obligated. Or the time my mom asked me to shake a tablecloth instead of bothering the boys. I think myself and every person deserves to eat her cake and not make it too, and Thanksgiving isn’t exactly a poster holiday for this.

Now I don’t mean to discount the many families who defy the women-in-the-kitchen roles, nor do I want to brand a woman with a scarlet letter for cooking dinner for her family. I applaud our generation for the general increased labor equality between the gender roles, including more men who cook.

Thanksgiving is usually an uncomfortable time for me as a feminist, but I have a lot to be thankful for — i.e. not living in the eras of Hester Prynne or Joan Cleaver — and I want Thanksgiving to be my own now, far away from the patriarchal, imperialistic beliefs of the people who threw the first Thanksgiving bash.

In fact, rather than joining my poor-little-suburban-white-girl-who-doesn’t-want-to-make-a-casserole Thanksgiving whinefest, I hope you continue to let any budding equality flourish.

This is just some food for thought.