The US myth of Thanksgiving

Observing Thanksgiving in the United States

Thanksgiving Holiday is one of the 12 nationally recognized Federal holidays in the United States, making it a centerpiece of U.S. culture.  It has a history and some core components that are deeply rooted in the American experience.  The following information is meant to give a deeper understanding about this “American Tradition.”

For many, it is a time to gather with family/ friends and eat to excess.  It is also a time to notice those less fortunate or those in need.  It is a peak time for financial donations to charities/ non-profits, as well as volunteerism.  Which is good and should continue to be a part of this holiday’s observation. 

Regardless of how each of us may observe the holiday, it is rooted in a history.  Understanding this history is important.  Thanksgiving has a widely known cultural narrative that involves Pilgrims and Indigenous people, as it happens, this history is not accurate.    

US Thanksgiving Story I – The Dominant Cultural Narrative

The above image encapsulates the dominant narrative.  It was painted by Jean-Leon Gerome Ferris circa 1915.  It is an idealization of what he called “The First Thanksgiving.” 

This image and its narrative was what I was taught in public school.  As an elementary student, it included me being dressed up in self-made pilgrim costumes and others in “Indian” head dresses made out of paper.  With my classroom fully costumed we were taught the history of Thanksgiving:

‘The pilgrims were Puritans (Christians) escaping persecution and religious intolerance in England.  They bravely set sail on the Mayflower to find freedom in the “New World.”  Despite all the dangers and challenges they managed to safely land at Plymouth Rock and began a new life.  They befriended the “Indians” and to celebrate their successful colony they invited them to join in their first harvest feast.’ 

The painting above presents the clean, well-dressed pilgrims serving down to the barely clothed savages as they sat humbly awaiting Christian charity.  In the backdrop is an impressive 2 story home, with intricate furniture, housewares and utensils.  The Indigenous People eating with their hands on the ground. 

As I have recently come to learn, almost all of that history and imagery was both false and misleading. The actual history is far more interesting.

The Pilgrims were a deeply religious, separatist sect of Puritanism, opposed to all authority {the closest contemporary comparison could be the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas}.  As a result of their beliefs, they were not treated well by the ruling class in England.  As a result of this mistreatment, they left England for the Netherlands.  The Netherlands had become a haven of religious tolerance, and the Pilgrims did quite well there.  However, Puritan leaders were worried that their acceptance by the Netherlands and freedom to practice their religion was making their followers to soft and less religious.  The leaders decided to move their followers to the “new world.” 

They sent a few scouts to find land in North America.  The scouts found land in Massachusetts, which had recently been abandoned by the Patuxet peoples, due to their near annihilation from diseases brough by European merchants who had been trading along the eastern seaboard.  With a location established, they began their search for ship passage to get there.  A Dutch merchant vessel, The Mayflower, was willing to sell them passage.  The first 35 Pilgrims (families) joined 67 other passengers travelling to North America in 1620.

The Mayflower arrived in Cape Cod, MA. in November of 1620 {One year after the first arrival of African Slaves to Virginia in 1619}.  They did not land at “Plymouth Rock”, because it did not exist, it would take over a century for that fabricated tale to be created by a church elder Thomas Faunce circa 1741. The actual Plymouth Rock tourist attraction will leave you scratching your head as to why this Plymouth Rock tale has achieved such wide-spread adoption.

As for the newly arrived 35 Pilgrims, they set off to establish their colony but were ill prepared and unable to manage the undertaking.  Approximately half of them died that winter due to disease and starvation.  It was the Wampanoag peoples that came to their rescue in the spring.  They sent an emissary named Samoset.  He surprised the Pilgrims by greeting them in English, which he had learned from fishermen on the Maine coast. Samoset did his best to let them know he would return with a more fluent English speaker. A few days later he returned with Tisquantum (aka Squanto),  the only surviving member of the Patuxet tribe, who’s land the Pilgrims now occupied. 

Tisquantum not only spoke English but had travelled to and lived in London from 1616-1617. His initial trip to Europe was due to a kidnapping by an English pirate named Thomas Hunt, who sold him into slavery in Spain.  By the time he met the Pilgrims he had travelled across the Atlantic 4 times.

Tisquantum and the Wampanoeg people agreed to help the Pilgrims to cultivate and live off the land in exchange for their support in thwarting the rival Narragansett tribe.  When the fall came and with it a harvest, it was the Wampanoag & Tisquantum that shared their long tradition of giving thanks to the land and the bounty it provides.  The post-harvest feast in 1621 was attended by 90 Wampanoag and 53 Pilgrims (more Pilgrims had arrived during the year).

Tisquantum would die the following year, succumbing to an unknown disease.  With his passing, brought the final extinction of the Patuxet peoples in the Americas.

The relationship and the treaties between the Wampanoag and Pilgrims would eventually be disregarded by the Pilgrims due to population growth and livestock encroachment on the Wampanoag’s land. The unabridged history for the Wampanoag is a tragedy worth studying because it exposes many intersecting narratives still relevant today

US Thanksgiving Story II

The actual first official ‘Thanksgiving Day’ holiday in the English colonies was declared by Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop in 1637 – he declared the day to give thanks for the more than seven hundred lives of the Pequot tribe {in Connecticut}, including women and children, killed at the hands of colonial settlers (Puritans).  The actual first official English celebration of Thanksgiving was in tribute to a massacre.

US Thanksgiving Story III

As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God", and calling on Americans to "unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions."

Thanksgiving Story IV

Modern Thanksgiving was proclaimed for all states in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln. Influenced by New Englander Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote letters to politicians for approximately 40 years advocating an official holiday, Lincoln set national Thanksgiving Day by proclamation for the final Thursday in November in celebration of the bounties that had continued to fall on the Union and for the military successes in the war, also calling on the American people, "with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience .. fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation..." Because of the ongoing Civil War, a nationwide Thanksgiving celebration was not realized until Reconstruction was completed in the 1870s.

On October 31, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a presidential proclamation changing the holiday to the next to last Thursday in November in an effort to boost the economy. The earlier date created an extra seven days for Christmas shopping since at that time retailers never began promoting the Christmas season until after Thanksgiving. But making the proclamation so close to the change wreaked havoc on the holiday schedules of many people, schools, and businesses, and most Americans were not in favor of the change. Some of those who opposed dubbed the holiday "Franksgiving" that year. Some state governors went along with the change while others stuck with the original November 30 date for the holiday, and three states — Colorado, Mississippi, and Texas — observed both dates.  The double Thanksgiving continued for two more years, and then on December 26, 1941, Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress changing the official national Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday in November starting in 1942 (there are usually four but sometimes five Thursdays in November, depending on the year).

Conclusion

Harvest celebrations (Thanksgivings) have been happening around the globe, across cultures for millennia.  I would think it safe to say they started 10,000 years ago when humans began to settle into agrarian societies. The celebration of the bounty provided by the earth preceded the Agrarian transition, nomadic hunter-gatherers had rituals/ celebrations around successful hunts that yielded long term sustenance (large game, whales, etc). 

For many cultures, specifically the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, it is a tradition going back centuries, in which thanks and respect for the land, other sentient beings and its bounty are given.  It is not a once-a-year ritual, but a daily practice. 

Unpacking the actual history of the Thanksgiving story in the US uproots core narratives.  It exposes indoctrination and the white supremacy underlying this country.  An even deeper dive into this one event with honesty and accountability would be transformational for this country in achieving truth and reconciliation.

My tradition will continue and it will share space with the dissonance of the truth about this National holiday.  To only take one narrative because it feels good and disregard the other is not only dishonest it perpetuates harm and complicity. 

Understanding and owning this history, has set in motion additional awareness to wrestle with in participating in this holiday with some semblance of honesty.  A core piece of that is recognizing the people who have stewarded it for millennia and who are the rightful owners of it:

Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land}

I hope your holidays are filled with joy and gratitude.  I hope it is filled with connection to family and friends.  Most of all I hope you take the opportunity to embrace the history, humanity and the Earth from whence it came.