The Table as an Altar: Remembering Our Ancestors

As the leaves turn and the air grows crisp, we approach that familiar time of year when families gather around the table. We bring out our favorite dishes, old recipes, and heirlooms that appear only once a year — like my grandmother’s delicate China, passed down from her great-grandmother as a wedding gift over a century ago. Our homes fill with the scents of cinnamon, sage, and roasting vegetables, and as we pour the wine, we offer our prayers of gratitude, honoring both the present moment and the generations that came before us.

Yet beneath all the warmth and nostalgia, Thanksgiving carries a complicated truth, which is a story that, for many, is both sacred and sorrowful. The holiday has become a symbol of togetherness, but it is also one rooted in the erasure and suffering of the Indigenous peoples of this land. It is no longer possible, or ethical, to feast without remembering the full story.

To honor the ancestors, we must honor all of them.

That includes those who came before us in our bloodlines, and those whose lands we now inhabit. The ancestors who endured hunger, hardship, and migration, as well as the ones whose generosity was met with violence and betrayal. Gratitude without remembrance is incomplete, and it is a form of spiritual amnesia.

So rather than turning away from this discomfort, what if we approached our tables this year as altars? What if we saw Thanksgiving not as a reenactment of a sanitized myth, but as an invitation to remember, repair, and reimagine what it means to gather?

The Origins of a Feast

The first meal we call “Thanksgiving” was less a peaceful gathering of friendship and more a complex moment of survival and power. In 1621, English settlers and the Wampanoag people shared a harvest meal in Plymouth after enduring brutal seasons of scarcity and illness. The Wampanoag offered food and knowledge that kept the settlers alive. However, what followed was not an enduring friendship; it was centuries of colonization, genocide, and displacement.

The Thanksgiving we celebrate today evolved as a myth that soothed the American psyche. It painted over our collective wound with the brush of unity. It helped us feel good about who we were becoming as a nation, without having to feel the pain of how we got there. It’s important to mention, for if we’re being honest with ourselves, true gratitude cannot grow in denial. It must be rooted in truth.

Gratitude as Ceremony

And yet, Thanksgiving has become a beautiful and ceremonial tradition in this land. Each year when I set the table, I find myself slowing down as I place the plates and light the candles. There is a sacred rhythm to preparing a meal, especially one shared with others. The table becomes a ceremonial ground and an altar where the visible and invisible meet.

That old china plate from my grandmother’s wedding day holds more than food—it holds lineage. It carries the laughter of generations, the stories told between courses, the arguments, the reconciliations, and the lessons. It is a vessel of memory.

Maybe in your home, it’s your father’s carving knife that comes out only in November. Or your mother’s handwritten recipe card with stains from gravy and time. Perhaps it’s the crocheted tablecloth your aunt made before she passed, or the candle that’s always lit for someone who is no longer physically there.

These are the quiet ways our ancestors gather with us. We don’t always name it as such, but we are creating altars every time we bring the past into the present with intention.

When we cook a meal using our grandmother’s recipe, we are calling her spirit back into the room. When we say grace in our own language or offer a prayer to the land, we are bridging worlds. 

The Return of Ancient Wisdom

As our world hurtles forward with dizzying speed that’s fueled by technology, consumption, and distraction—many of us are feeling the ache of disconnection. We sense the imbalance in our culture and in our own hearts.

It is no coincidence that ancient wisdom traditions are resurfacing now. People are once again gathering in circles, tending fires, creating rituals, and seeking ways to live in right relationship both with themselves, each other, and the Earth. We are remembering what our ancestors never forgot: that everything is sacred when approached with deep awareness and care.

This reawakening is not nostalgia, but the soul’s way of correcting course.

When we bring intentionality back to our gatherings, we begin to transform even the simplest meal into a ceremony. The act of sitting, eating, sharing, and listening becomes a sacred exchange that begins to heal, not just within us, but within the collective.

Reimagining Thanksgiving

So how might we reimagine Thanksgiving in a way that honors the truth, the ancestors, and the future?

Perhaps this year, we can begin the meal with a land acknowledgment, which is not a token gesture, but a moment of reverence. We speak aloud the names of the Indigenous people whose land we stand upon, and we offer a prayer for their descendants.

Maybe we can set an empty place at the table for the ancestors, or for those who have been displaced, unseen, or forgotten. Perhaps instead of focusing on abundance through excess, we focus on abundance through connection and invite someone who might otherwise be alone.

Perhaps we cook with local ingredients and say thank you to the soil, water, and hands that nourished them. And perhaps we ask ourselves: What traditions do we want to pass down to our children, to their children, and to the ones who will be sitting around these tables a hundred years from now?

Will they remember us as the generation that turned away from comfort to face our history? As the ones who began to reimagine a world where gratitude and justice walk hand in hand?

The parts of culture built on supremacy, erasure, and extraction must be composted—returned to the soil of awareness, where they can become nutrients for something more whole and inclusive to grow.

We don’t need to reject tradition altogether. We simply need to ask: Does this practice deepen our connection, or does it divide? Does it honor life, or does it diminish it? This is the alchemy of spiritual evolution, which turns what is outdated into something regenerative.

The Invitation

So as you gather this year (whether with family, friends, or in quiet solitude), pause for a moment before the meal. Look around the table and notice the light flickering in the eyes of those you love. Feel the heartbeat of the ancestors who made this moment possible and give thanks for the blessings and for the lessons.

And remember: the table itself is an altar.

Each dish, each story, and each shared moment is an offering. When we approach our gatherings with that kind of reverence, gratitude becomes more than a word—it becomes a way of life.

May we eat with awareness.

May we remember with compassion.

May we pass forward only that which nourishes life.

And may our children’s children someday sit at their own tables knowing that we were the generation who chose to turn our feasts into prayers.