Saying NO THANKS to Thanksgiving means saying no thanks to colonization, capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, racism, and genocide.
I may not be a politician nor do I have a lot of power. But I will use my voice to humbly say that looking back on the twentieth century, I find nationalism and exceptionalism really creepy. This week, our country will be celebrating one of the worst holidays of all.
My family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. We opted out shortly after my kids were born. Lucky for me, Thanksgiving was never an important holiday growing up, so nobody was upset about the new stance. We still get together with our friends and family and enjoy each other’s company since there aren’t many days where everyone is given the day off work. But Thanksgiving as an American tradition? No thanks.
Over the past several years, I’ve felt more disgusted about “celebrating” this holiday — and by doing so, celebrating genocide and imperialism. Everything we learned about Thanksgiving in school is a huge lie. I know that a lot of Americans cherish this tradition but I encourage you to do your research.
The story of Thanksgiving is usually told from only one side -- that of the European pilgrims who came to America. Rarely is it told from the perspective of the people who were already here. As a result, the role played by Native Americans in helping the pilgrims to survive is often downplayed or ignored.
To Native Americans today, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and there is a ceremony at Plymouth Rock every year.
It is a reminder that in return for their help, they were repaid with the loss of their land and destruction of their people. When doing more research, you’ll discover that the English colonists in Massachusetts were anything but peaceful or friendly. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop called for a day of thanksgiving to celebrate the massacre of more than 700 Pequot men, women and children in 1637. It was one of countless atrocities committed against Indigenous tribes by the Puritans.
United States history books skip right over this. They also severely downplay the Puritans’ brutal persecution of anyone who did not share their strict and narrow-minded religious views. These were the folks responsible for the Salem Witch Trials, during which they actually imprisoned a five year old and charged her with witchcraft. They also tortured and killed Quakers who dared to venture into their settlements. (Denise Reich, Shameless Mag)
And aside from the fact that the first European settlers didn’t discover new land so much as they ravaged the people who actually already lived here, spreading death and destruction and disease, they also didn’t invent Thanksgiving. The holiday actually has roots dating back to the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s and originally centered on celebrating and honoring the harvest. In fact, many other countries celebrate Thanksgiving as a harvest festival to this day, including Canada, Germany, Japan, Liberia and some Caribbean island countries. America, as with many other things increasingly, was late to the game. So declaring it “the first Thanksgiving” is grossly inaccurate. (Allison Hope, SheKnows)
The story we’re sold in elementary school about pilgrims and Indians and “the first Thanksgiving” in truth can be tied to very little. The most accurate parallel to the tall tale we’ve been told can be connected to a one-off gathering during the 1600s in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where European settlers had set up a colony, to celebrate a successful harvest. Members of the Wampanoag tribe are documented to have attended. Zero turkey was consumed. In fact, it wasn’t until nearly two hundred years later in the mid-1800s that anyone in America started to refer to the event as Thanksgiving (due in good part to lobbying by one Ms. Sarah Josepha Hale, who claimed America had “too few holidays” and who also advocated for the increase of women’s access to education and careers in medicine). There is no chance the Pilgrims invented the damn holiday. But there is a great chance they gave the people who were from that land the gift of… diphtheria and smallpox. (Allison Hope, SheKnows)
The only thing that’s truly American? Our continued racism and bigotry — and our ability to create and spread fake news, whether on Twitter, in doctored news footage or in our schools’ history books.
Let’s all do the right thing and sit this fake holiday out, along with all the other racist and imperialist American holidays, like the 4th of July.
For more reading:
RETHINKING THANKSGIVING: MYTHS & MISGIVINGS
Mass Shootings Are Connected to America’s Legacy of Anti-Indigenous Violence
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