Whatever Happened to Thanksgiving?

When I was a kid growing up in New England (which wasn’t that long ago), Thanksgiving was a pretty big deal. Not just because of the family get togethers, football and Macy’s parade, but because it was a celebration of what was considered the ‘First Thanksgiving Meal’ between the Pilgrims and the American Indians. I vaguely remember a first grade assignment in which we were to draw the story of Thanksgiving complete with the Mayflower, Pilgrims and Indians all culminating in the first Thanksgiving feast.

And everywhere you went there were decorations with turkeys, pilgrims, Indians, corn and all things feastly. Before the Christmas colors of red, green and white came out, there were the Autumn colors of yellow, orange, red and brown.

Light, fluffy and highly simplified I’m sure, but that’s what was in the public consciousness nonetheless.

Today, in Southern California at least, it appears Thanksgiving has become little more than a pre ‘Black Friday’ pit stop on the race from Halloween to Christmas…or actually Halloween to ‘holiday’ but that’s another story.

So why the ditching of the first Thanksgiving story and the ‘we are the world’ themes?

Much, I believe is due to a belief that has crept into the public mindset about a ‘White Man’s Genocide’ against the Native Americans complete with what many call the ‘first germ warfare’ as evil white men intentionally spread smallpox on blankets to wipe out the Indians.

True or false?

Well, I’ve tried for quite some time to find reliable facts and resources to answer that question. Good information is hard to come by but the more I look the more I’m seeing it’s false.

Did the settlers commit atrocities against the Indians? Yes, at times they did.

Did the Indians also commit atrocities against the settlers? Yes, at times they also did.

Did the Indian population get devastated by the diseases of the European settlers? Yes it did.

Was it a systematic, intentional act that falls under the definition of genocide?

No it wasn’t.

Michael Medved has a book called, “The Ten Big lies about America” and the first lie is, “America was Founded on Genocide Against Native Americans ”. You can read most of the chapter for free here (click on ‘look inside’ and click on ‘first pages’). It’s worth the read to get some perspective on the facts of how it all went down.

Some thoughts to consider if you’ve been led to believe that it was ‘just totally lame’ what the European Settlers did to the Indians:

At that point in history, the Earth was a very, very, big place with most of it being ‘the great unknown’. So to sail to some faraway land, park your boat, find some people staring at you through the bushes and then yell at them, “Do you mind if we camp here?” was basically the norm. That’s hard for us imagine in today’s ‘global’ society where virtually every square inch of inhabitable land is accounted for and claimed by somebody. Wasn’t so back then.

Was it messy business?  Sure it was.

History is messy.

But let’s not be guilty of chronological snobbery and judge the past too harshly with today’s knowledge. It’s OK to be thankful for what we have even if the path to having it has its bumps.