Held on the fourth Thursday of November, Thanksgiving is a national holiday all about expressing gratitude with friends and family. Assuming we all watched This Is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers, we’re all familiar with the story of the Pilgrims coming in contact with the Natives and eventually sharing a meal that would later become Thanksgiving. However, parts of the story were left out and forgotten over the years. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we should take the initiative to learn the history of the national holiday, and how it got to be what it is today.
The most popular version of the Thanksgiving story involves the Pilgrims coming over from England to escape religious persecution. From there they met Squanto, a Native who knew how to speak English. He taught them how to farm corn with fish heads. As thanks for the help, in 1621, William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony, invited Massasoit or Ousamequin, the Grand Sachem (leader) of the Wampanoag Federation to the autumn harvest feast. There, they would gather and eat food, which the Natives also brought with them when they came. Of course, most of the story is a myth and some details are untrue, like how feasting was not so much a thing. Interestingly, Pilgrims focused on prayer and fasted during this time. But trivial things such as that don’t matter as much as the fact that Thanksgiving was darker and more sorrowful than thought.
In 1637, during the Pequot wars, “… while their warriors were away, an estimated 400 to 700 Pequot women, children, and old men were massacred and burned by combined forces of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Saybrook (Connecticut) colonies and Narragansett and Mohegan allies,” according to the Smithsonian Magazine. Additionally, women and children who were left alive were taken as slaves and sent to the Bermuda and West Indies. The day after, May 27, 1637, John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, declared a day of Thanksgiving as a way to celebrate the victory against the Pequots. This is considered to be the true first Thanksgiving.
Many Indigenous people find Thanksgiving to be a conflicting subject. To them, it’s a reminder of the killing of both culture and people as a result of colonialism. Not to mention, the numbers of Natives had already dwindled due to newly introduced diseases, which had a large contribution to the massacre of Natives. The story most known is a watered-down version and leaves many details out, mainly the bad parts. Additionally, as mentioned in the Smithsonian Magazine, part of the problem with Thanksgiving is how Natives are represented. In the US, for example, many children experience dressing up as a Native or making a Native American headpiece with feathers. Not only is this stereotyping, it is also cultural misappropriation.
So, why do we tend to misconstrue Thanksgiving’s history as much as we do? “At least half of the population that experienced the event of Thanksgiving became the most powerful people in the land, and it’s really important to control the narrative of things even if it’s small, not necessarily lies, but small bits of information that get misremembered over the years,” shared Mr. Chabot. Sometimes learning the truth can be uncomfortable and people tend to stray away from the harsher parts of history possibly out of shame. As Mr. Blevins put it, “I think people like things in nice, neatly tied up packages, and it’s a story that is more palatable politically, culturally, ethnically, and morally.”
Although a controversial subject of whether or not we should celebrate Thanksgiving, we can still find ways to be respectful to Indigenous people while also partaking in Thanksgiving. As suggested by Ms. Durham, we can stop dressing kids up as Pilgrims and Native Americans as well as include Native American dishes into our Thanksgiving dinner. Similarly, Mr. Chabot proposes we highlight their traditions. “In general, preserving and re-elevating their culture is really important because so much of what gets erased from cultural identity is just what they do, what their life is like, what food they ate, etc.” He also points out that while Thanksgiving can be seen as the beginning of a genocide, other holidays can also be seen the same way, Christmas for example. However, that shouldn’t stop us from celebrating something meant to represent such a lovely concept. “The idea of giving thanks is profound and wonderful…” says Mr. Blevins, “I think we should all be grateful, at whatever time of the year, for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us.”
As Thanksgiving became what it is today, different traditions developed from family to family, and became very personalized. It’s intriguing to see the differences in how people celebrate and what they’re thankful for. There is no limit to what you can be thankful for either. “I’m thankful that I live in a great country, with a great God, and currently a great state with a fantastic governor,” shared Mr Russell. On the other hand, Mr. Blevins is thankful for his sons, and while they may not have a unique tradition, they “make every effort to try to get a very small family together from the four corners of the Earth at some point.”
Thanksgiving, the holiday, can represent many different things to people, but the idea of expressing gratitude with the people you love is one everyone can share.
