Holidays are funny.

One culture's - well, turkey - is another culture's poison.

That's why news that Juneteenth Day will be signed into being as a state holiday next week got me thinking. This being Thanksgiving Day and all.

Thanksgiving - that most American of holidays, unassailable in it's reverence for such a basic value as gratitude.

Well, just ask a Native American about that. Many of them will tell you that the mostly apocryphal historic shared feast commemorated  today was merely an early marker of an epoch of decimation by disease and violence at the hands of the European immigrants.

Another modern analysis of the historic Thanksgiving focuses on the mind-blowing number of fears confronted by those early settlers: fears of the natives; the Spanish, who claimed the land they had trespassed upon; the climate; starvation; and strange new skittering critters and insects.

As usual, there are at least two sides of the story. And fear exerts its twisted influence.

Which brings us to Juneteenth. The holiday marks the bringing of the news of emancipation to slaves in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 -  more than two years after the Jan. 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The retelling of that moment of jubilation was the seed of reunions in Texas that grew into celebrations that spread out across the states. Including to Wisconsin, where Milwaukee has a large celebration dating back to the end of the 1960s.

Milwaukee is where Gov. Doyle is scheduled to sign the law making Wisconsin the 32nd state to recognize the holiday. The holiday doesn't carry a paid day off for state workers, so the effort here did not run into a buzz saw of opposition over public spending. But supporters have their sights set on a national holiday.

President Obama, in recognizing the celebrations of rights and freedoms in African-American communities on Juneteenth Day this year, pointed to the call for an apology for slavery and segregation that had just won support from the U.S. Senate.

Ties to the defensiveness-provoking ideas of "blame" and "apology" have already stirred a smattering of opposition to a national Juneteenth Day.  But if anything can counter fear, it's probably familiarity.

The stories of a shared Thanksgiving feast between natives and the Pilgrims may not have been what they were cracked up to be. Still,  many of us have learned that nothing revives the spirit of Thanksgiving so much as bringing a newcomer to the table. Maybe it can become that way with Juneteenth too.

Here is Wisconsin, we have Juneteenth Day. And in Madison, our own vibrant celebration at Penn Park, with music and food and games enjoyed mostly by our African-American residents. If you haven't been there yet, make a promise as you enjoy your Thanksgiving meal to check out the celebration at Penn Park come June. And help write the modern history of Juneteenth.

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