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From Tradition to Truth: How Your OOO Can Challenge Thanksgiving Stereotypes
This Thanksgiving season, you can be a catalyst for allyship and change just by changing your out-of-office message.
As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Professional, I do my absolute best to put education and awareness into everything I do. And out-of-office messages during the Thanksgiving season are not the exception!
In fact, I strongly believe OOOs can be amazing catalysts for conversation when we use them to spread information, awareness, and allyship. Especially when we think about topics that we often minimize or don’t discuss at all… and y’all know that the History of Thanksgiving is one of those “difficult” topics we usually avoid.
With that in mind, I’d love to share the OOO message I’ve been using for a few years now. It’s simple, effective, and, more importantly, it does what other out-of-office messages don’t: it pushes you into intentional action.
As an immigrant Latina woman, I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. This is purely a North American Holiday that has always confused the daylights out of me. I wholeheartedly believe we need to come to terms with the fact that this Holiday needs to be decolonized, deconstructed, and built anew with a more truthful and equitable foundation. But I still appreciate that, for many, this is purely a community-, food-, and gratitude-centered holiday.
Looking at this Holiday from the outside, even though I don’t understand it, I enjoy the food and how many families, communities, or friends get together in a way they don’t during the rest of the year. I appreciate how so many people I know do the (almost) impossible to travel to be with family or friends, learn how to cook, and get in a very festive mood.
As a DEI Professional, however, I can’t help but be reflective, intentional, and vocal about what Thanksgiving truly represents — a day of mourning for many Indigenous peoples.
