OPINION: The truth about Thanksgiving

I have an opinion I’d like to share, an opinion I’ve learned is a bit controversial. I don’t care about Thanksgiving. I think it’s overrated and the “history” we learn about it in school is usually incorrect.

In my kind, Thanksgiving is just a precursor get together for Christmas, an extension of Christmas, really. While I might put Christmas decorations up earlier, it’s generally the holiday when my family gets together to put up the Christmas tree. Thanksgiving is the holiday where the extended family decides who is getting gifts for who, and we share our Christmas lists. Thanksgiving is just a pre-Christmas.

Now, I know that’s not the case for everyone, and I’m not knocking the general idea of Thanksgiving. I think it is wonderful that families get together to celebrate their blessings and give thanks for what they have. Really, that should be something people do more often, rather than as the last thing they do before going wild for the holiday season.

I think the main gripe I have with Thanksgiving is “the reason behind the season.” We like to boast that the holiday is about the English pilgrims and indigenous Americans getting together to celebrate the harvest and love one another. Children will put on plays wearing the classic pilgrim hats and watch the various Charlie Brown films about the occasion.

While I love the classic Charlie Brown films, I know that they are incorrect and idealized versions of what really happened.

What we like to call “The First Thanksgiving” happened in 1621 between English settlers and the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag people came not because they were excited to have new neighbors and wanted peace, but because they had no choice in order to survive.

The English settlers were not as helpless as people like to portray them. In fact, they explored along the shore until they found the best place to settle.

James W. Loewen, author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” is quoted in Maya Salam’s 2017 The New York Times article “Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong.”

“And Plymouth, Mr. Loewen noted, was already a village with clear fields and a spring when the Pilgrims found it. ‘A lovely place to settle,’ he said. ‘Why was it available? Because every single native person who had been living there was a corpse.’ Plagues had wiped them out.”

These English settlers were far from the first Europeans to come to the Americas and make contact with the indigenous peoples. European diseases brought by European settlers and explorers decimated the native populations, killing about 95% of all inhabitants.

The few Wampanoag left when the English settlers arrived in 1620 worked with them to survive.

“No question about it, Wampanoag leader Ousamequin reached out to the English at Plymouth and wanted an alliance with them,” Claire Bugos wrote in a 2019 article for the Smithsonian Magazine. “But it’s not because he was innately friendly. It’s because his people have been decimated by an epidemic disease, and Ousamequin sees the English as an opportunity to fend off his tribal rebels.”

While the two groups of people likely did share a meal in 1621, it wasn’t the start of a beautiful friendship like much media makes it seem. Instead, it seems to be a fakeout by history.

“We, the Wampanoag, welcome you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end,” wrote Wamsutta Frank James, who was an instrumental part of forming the indigenous counter-holiday of National Day of Mourning. This is celebrated the same day as American Thanksgiving.

“A lot of people don’t acknowledge it as Thanksgiving. They say, ‘I’m going to get together with family, and it’s going to be about sharing the meal, but we’re not going to acknowledge the Mayflower and the pilgrims because it’s holding up this false moment of friendship and completely disregards the genocide and the mass land theft and the brutality that all Native peoples experience,’” said Dr.Kelli Mosteller, Citizen Potawatami Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center director.

The history of Thanksgiving and the deeds done to the native peoples of the Americas are terrible but should be known and remembered. That doesn’t mean people can’t continue to celebrate Thanksgiving. We simply shouldn’t continue teaching the mythology behind it as fact.

One way that some people like to honor America’s indigenous people at Thanksgiving is to make one or two indigenous dishes along with the traditional Thanksgiving food. One example is the Three Sisters Succotash.

Three sisters refers to the main principal foods of many indigenous tribes: Corn, beans and squash, which grow extremely well together in a mutually beneficial relationship. Succotash, which comes from the word squash, refers to a winter stew made from corn and beans. There are many recipes online, so I’d encourage you find one you like and try it this year!