I don’t want to come across as blasphemous, but Thanksgiving is a bunch of hooey . . . at least in the way that most Americans observe and celebrate it. Pilgrims, Indians, turkeys, mashed potatoes, great revelry . . . the ultimate party giving “thanks” at the invitation of the colonists. A real “Hallmark” affair. But it is just not true. It is hooey.
Okay . . . I’ve looked. I have scoured my Bible (all the translations I have) and I still cannot a reference to the holiday we refer to and celebrate as Thanksgiving. Couldn’t find it in the Old Testament. Rumor has it that it might have been on the tablet that Moses dropped and broke while coming down off the mountaintop after conferring with God. This conspiracy theory banks on the idea that there were originally more than ten commandments, but Moses was kind of a klutz . . . he tripped and dropped a tablet. Whatever the case, Thanksgiving did not come down from the mountain of God. Couldn’t find any references through the “kingdom” parts of the Old Testament, though there were often decrees calling for days of giving thanks. There might have been references at some point in the good old part of the Bible, but they have somehow disappeared . . . probably under the dogmatic supervision of the Moses Seminar.
Couldn’t find it in the New Testament either. You would have thought that at some point in the ministry of Jesus he would have made a reference to it . . . and, maybe he did. Certainly, we do not have everything that Jesus said and did in our New Testament due to some creative editing here and there throughout the centuries. You would have thought Jesus would have said something religious like: “A day should be set aside on the fourth Thursday of the eleventh month of the year, a day to offer thanks for the bounty of the earth. It should be a day of great feasting, partying, and watching football after the Macy’s parade.” Maybe at the tail end of the Last Supper. I looked but couldn’t find such a reference. Maybe that was the “yada, yada, yada” that got dropped. After all, you know the tenacity of those who call themselves the Jesus Seminar.
Same with the Epistles . . . nothing there. Apparently, it was not “God mandated” as there is nothing in the scriptures . . . the holy word of God straight out of the Holy’s mouth.
So . . . what is all of this hullabaloo about Thanksgiving?
First, though there are no references to the celebration and holiday we observe as Thanksgiving, the scriptures are filled with admonishments for the people to pause and give thanks. Sometimes it is for a few minutes and at other times its days if not weeks of observing giving thanks. God’s people are to be a “thankful” people and should practice the art of gratitude on a regular basis. Because of this history is filled with days of giving thanks . . . Thanksgiving. Shoot! Even observing the Lord’s Supper, more theologically known as the Eucharist, is an act of thanksgiving. Look it up . . . “eucharist” is a Greek work meaning thanksgiving.
Second, observing a day or celebration of giving thanks is not solely the property of us Americans . . . of the good ol’ U.S. of A.! No, just about all cultures, if not all, have set aside days in which to give thanks for a lot of different reasons. Other cultures and religions have celebrations of gratitude and giving thanks . . . probably going all the way back to the start of humanity. The celebration of thanksgiving of we observe it is not original with us, though we might want to think that it is. Giving thanks probably spans the consciousness of the human race.
I probably should tread lightly . . . Thanksgiving in America is the second favorite holiday after Christmas. What’s not to like? Feasting, family, Macy’s parade, football . . . it’s a wonderful party! Yet, as the story goes, it all started with the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down for a happy meal together and becoming BFFs. Even Pocahontas gave it “thumbs up” . . . except for the fact that she wasn’t there that is a pretty good endorsement. She was a member of a completely different tribe and had died four years prior to the actual event in 1617. As good as it sounds, this isn’t quite the “real” story behind the story.
Settlers, like the Pilgrims, were hardly the kindly, giving group that most of us learned about in our youth. Far from it. As the story goes, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock where they established a colony and began going about existing. After a year they were pretty happy with the harvest of their crops and decided they should take the time and give thanks with a three-day celebration. And that is what they did. The Indians were not invited.
What we often forget is that the Pilgrims were not the first to be in this new land. There were other explorers before them. With the explorers came illnesses and disease that were foreign to the natives who had been there for centuries. Such a calamity had happened to the Wampanoag tribe wiping out great numbers of its people and leaving them weak in defending themselves against their enemies. Because of this, and obviously the weapons of the Pilgrims, the chief of the tribe—Ousamequin—saw this as an opportunity to forge an alliance with them. A sort of mutual protection order.
During the celebration among the Pilgrims weapons were fired off. The Wampanoags hear this noise. The chief gathered up some warriors (90 to be exact) and headed off towards the noise to offer protection to their neighbors. Turns out it was just drunken boys being boys shooting off their guns. Ousamequin used this as an opportunity to form an alliance. It was not because he was friendly, but because it was to the tribe’s advantage against their enemies. It was great while it lasted, but it did not last long. The relationship deteriorates and eventually leads to one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip’s War. The big losers in all of this were the Indians.
So, the Wampanoags stumbled into the party uninvited and took advantage of the situation to create an alliance. A meal was shared. It just wasn’t the meal we associate with Thanksgiving. Warriors were sent out to get meat—mostly deer when their numbers overwhelmed the Pilgrims. So, there was venison, and some sort of cooked fowl (though it was not turkey). There were no mashed potatoes, not even baked because that was not a crop in the area and wouldn’t be for years. It is true that there were cranberries, but they did not come out of a can in jelly form. There was also pumpkin, but no pie. It was not a potluck affair.
Also, there were few women at the celebration. The warriors came as a war party minus any women from the village. Nor were there many women on the Pilgrim side as very few survived the trip to the “new world”. It was largely a male thing and far from what we were taught as children. Nor was it a “stately” affair with the best china being used. Far from it . . . there were few buildings, little furniture, and most people ate outside while sitting on the ground or on a barrel with plates on their laps. The men fired guns, ran races, and drank liquor, while struggling to speak in broken English and Wampanoag. A fairly disorderly affair that resembles nothing of the pious picture we have in our minds of sitting at long tables, quietly passing plates and bowls of food between the Pilgrims and Indians. None the less, it served its purpose of creating a treaty between the two groups.
For the next 50 years, the alliance was tested as the colonials kept expanding their land acquisitions, spread diseases, and basically exploited the Wampanoag land. Such a relationship dissolves into tension between the two groups. The tensions eventually ignited into war. This war was known as King Philip’s War or the Great Narragansett War. This war devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of the invading colonists. The Wampanoags of today remember the Pilgrims’ entry to their homeland as a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.
That’s a story we should lift a few for! Not! That is not the story we celebrate. Instead, we celebrate the mythic . . .
The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new land, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. It is a handoff . . . the Indians are handing off America to the white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity, and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. At least that is how it is remembered. The great Manifest Destiny conspiracy.
And unfortunately, too many of us buy into the myth and not the reality. Too many of us accept without questioning. Lock, stock, and barrel. And it is hooey!
For a long time, the days of giving thanks were sporadic. Our history shows that they were called here and there by communities, states, and even the nation as a need was felt. Nothing was really organized for a long time, but the idea was planted . . . and, surprise . . . it involved a lot of politics as it ran its course towards acceptance and becoming acknowledged. So, the seeds were planted and throughout history it gained steam.
One of the biggest advocates for declaring a National Day of Thanksgiving was Sarah Josepha Hale. Though the name is not recognizable, all of us know Sarah. Sarah was a magazine editor who had a number one children’s hit . . . Mary Had a Little Lamb. Yea, that was Sarah. She was really hooked on the idea of Thanksgiving as a national day of observance and she lobbied hard through five different presidencies to make it a federal holiday. She finally struck gold when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a holiday in 1863. He thought it would be a good idea and a step towards reuniting the fractured country after the Civil War. He put it on the calendar for the last Thursday of November. Had nothing to do with pilgrims, Indians, or turkey. In fact, Lincoln declared in his proclamation that it would be a day to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”
Our nation celebrated this day of thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November until 1939. That year the President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Of course, with change there comes opposition . . . in this case, passionate opposition. Caving to this opposition Roosevelt eventually signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. Again, had nothing to do with that first Thanksgiving.
There are a lot of traditions related to the holiday. For example, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. There was no parade at the first Thanksgiving (they forgot to unpack the floats off the Mayflower, and they ended back in England) . . . the Macy Parade grew out of a parade that Macy put on as a promotion to kick off the holiday shopping season in 1924. Of course, Santa has been a part of it from its start and was declared the “king of the kiddies”. Such is the tradition of Thanksgiving.
We need to understand that a lot of what we think of as “Thanksgiving” are myths of a grand illusion we celebrate. Those myths are not true, and we need quite perpetuating them. The Pilgrims and Native Americans were not friends who worked together . . . nope it was a political and survival necessity. Their relationship, at best, was tense. The Pilgrims did not teach the “uncivilized” Indians about Thanksgiving. Native Americans were not “uncivilized” having large and complex societies long before the settlers arrived. They already had their own harvest celebrations, feast traditions and holidays of their own. Giving thanks was a big part of their religious practices. There are a lot of myths that surround this holiday that are detrimental to Native Americans that are just wrong and perpetuate the colonial view and treatment of this population. Don’t believe me, well then, I suggest that you do a little homework. Take the time to research the origins of Thanksgiving . . . take a Google adventure. Learn for yourself what it is that you are actually celebrating.
I do not think that most people want to observe and celebrate something that is harmful to another. Thanksgiving is such an observance as we understand it. Setting aside days of giving thanks are not relegated to the fourth Thursday of November. Throughout history people, communities, states, and nations have declared days to be thankful. On those days the people were asked to “give thanks” . . . to “give thanks” for bountiful harvests, blessings, family, community . . . for another day, another opportunity.
As we gather around tables for Thanksgiving with family and friends, let us focus on the reasons we need to “give thanks” and not rely upon some mythic understanding of why we are gathered. The reality and facts point to a completely different story and outcome. I believe that we should all be thankful because there is much to be thankful for. We should pause more often in our lives . . . even on a daily basis . . . to “give thanks”. Someone once said that simplest prayer that anyone could ever utter is to say, “thank you.” I certain you can find that in the Bible. That is a Thanksgiving I believe we can all support and get behind. May yours be a joyful celebration of life and all the blessings it brings. Besides, who needs turkey to be thankful?
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