Benji Boyd, Sophomore
All over the world, autumn is a time for festivals. Germany celebrated the fall harvest with Erntedank on the 11th of September. Japan appreciates their workers on Labor Thanksgiving Day, on November 23. For the US, our famous fall festival has a history that stretches back before the founding of our nation itself, and holds a variety of different meanings in our society today.
Any American child knows the story of Thanksgiving to some degree. We know about the Pilgrims, with their stiff buckled hats and black clothes. We know how they struggled to establish a colony at Plimoth, faced with an unknown environment and harsh winters. In the autumn of 1621, governor John Carver and the sachem of the Wampoanoag tribe, Ousamequin, celebrated a peace they had declared earlier that year with the first Thanksgiving feast, a sign of friendship between their two peoples. Unfortunately, it would not last.
In 1675, the peace was broken by King Philip’s war: a bloody conflict between English settlers and several indigenous tribes of New England. Both sides lost many, but ultimately, the natives were massacred by European weaponry.
This dark period overshadows the happy events of the first Thanksgiving, and for many, ruins its meaning. Why should we celebrate peace and togetherness stemming from the meeting of two people destined to tear each other apart in the coming years? Most American children are spared from learning about the atrocities committed by the colonists following their storybook depictions of Squanto and Captain Standish planting corn together. Learning the truth of our history can be a rude awakening. This raises the question of why we do celebrate Thanksgiving, even after the peace was broken. Who chose this historical event in particular to base a national holiday on? Spoiler: it wasn’t the Pilgrims.
These days, most people don’t gather with their family on Thanksgiving Day to remember the plight of the Pilgrims, or the horrors of the Civil War. Like most holidays, the US has transformed Thanksgiving into a time for spending and excess. If you disagree, just watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.
The US has a long history of sporadic Thanksgiving celebrations. In 1777, the Continental Congress declared a day of thanksgiving to revel in the colonists’ victory at Saratoga. George Washington named one in 1789 after the creation of the new US Constitution. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, when it was finally given its place as a federal holiday. Victory was in sight for the Union, giving Lincoln and his northern supporters many things to be thankful for at the time. Searching for a way to bring the fractured country together, he solidified the idea of making Thanksgiving a formal holiday that had been stewing for decades, beginning the tradition of setting aside the last Thursday of each November for feasting and gratitude.
This remained in place until 1939, when the last Thursday fell on November the 30th. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday forward a week, causing widespread disruption and disagreement about when it would be celebrated. But what caused this petty and seemingly unnecessary American conflict? You guessed it: consumerism.
Businesses were worried a late Thanksgiving would shorten the Christmas shopping season and cost them money. For years states argued over when to celebrate the holiday, and it wasn’t until 1941 that Congress ended the chaos by declaring it the fourth Thursday of November, which it remains to this day. Luckily, through the connections between families and friends, Thanksgiving has managed to maintain its original purpose of expressing gratitude for what we have. It’s a time to see family we don’t get to very often. It’s a break from thirty minute lunch periods to sit for hours around a table, eating and enjoying one another’s company. It’s a chance to remember that we’re lucky to have what we have (despite the entirety of the following month being dedicated to buying each other more stuff).
However, for some people, the fourth Thursday of the month isn’t a time for celebration at all. After all, the history behind it isn’t exactly a cause for joy. Many native American communities recognize the fourth Thursday as a “Day of Mourning” for all of the indigenous people who died as a result of colonization and war. The first national Day of Mourning is attributed to Frank James, or Wamsutta, the former leader of the Wampanoag tribe. In 1970, he was invited to a Thanksgiving state dinner to give a speech. However, the organizers deemed his words too inflammatory for the event, and eventually uninvited him from speaking. He gave his speech anyway, to a crowd of supporters on Cole Hill, beginning what is now known as the Day of Mourning.
It is worthwhile to ponder how different viewpoints shape our understanding of Thanksgiving. The average American has no special connection to the original Pilgrims, and the holiday has evolved into the sum of our national and family traditions. But to those whose ancestors suffered in the aftermath of European colonization of these lands, it holds a very different meaning.
Good advice is when carving your turkey this year, make sure you know which values you are celebrating, and always keep Wamsutta’s words in the back of your mind: “This is a time of celebration for you – celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People . . .”