Exposing Thanksgiving

Story by Marcellus Peters-Jackson. Photo courtesy of Pixaby.

Everybody, or at least most people, know about Thanksgiving. It’s the day when English settlers and Native Americans shared their food with the settlers and both the settlers and native Americans celebrated. Or so the story goes. This is actually a bit wrong. According to britannica.com, Thanksgiving  is a holiday celebrating the first “American” corn harvest.

The only issue about this is how the English settlers actually got their corn. At that time, the Native Americans were living their best lives, while the English came to America looking for religious freedom. But they had no time to plant their food. As they struggled through winter with the little rations they had from England, settlers decided to go and grab food from the natives in order to survive. So, in congratulations of surviving the winter, the English hosted the holiday. 

We’ve seen what the holiday’s actually about behind the eating and being thankful for said food. But what about eating? Why’s the eating and being thankful part so important to the holiday? Well a couple hundred years ago, turkeys started to gain traction as the “Thanksgiving food” after Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a holiday. The “being thankful” part however, is in the name so people say what they’re thankful for during Thanksgiving.

So we know why we do the things we do on Thanksgiving, why the holiday exists in the first place, and what actually happened for the first Thanksgiving to happen. Now I’ll ask you, the reader, a question. Should we just ignore the origins and accept what Thanksgiving has become? Or rebrand it into a new holiday? Like Columbus day and indigenous peoples day. You can decide.  No matter what holidays have origins, or if you decide to just not celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope everyone who reads this enjoys their break! 

Marcellus Peters-Jackson is a 7th grade scholar at Friendship Woodridge International School.