In 1637, near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival to celebrate Thanksgiving, but they were all murdered by the English and Dutch mercenaries, so the next day, the governor of the MA Bay Colony declared a “day of Thanksgiving”, for their victory over the Pequot Tribe. All cultures understood what a good thing feasting was, so the First Thanksgiving participants brought what they had – game, fish, squash, cranberries – and gorged in peace. The Pilgrims had arrived in MA during a hard winter, and many more of them might have died had it not been for the assistance provided by the Native Americans.
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As Thanksgiving nears, Americans are getting ready to open their mouths and loosen their belts to celebrate the day. President Barack Obama named November Native American Heritage Month earlier this year, so many schools and towns have been celebrating and educating students about Native Americans throughout the month.
The main protagonists of the Thanksgiving story – the Pilgrims – were, after all, refugees themselves. This Thanksgiving, it is especially important that we tell the whole story, and think about its meaning. We keep “Americanizing” Thanksgiving, turning it into yet another excuse to have sales and take vacations and play football.
Two years ago, there was a big change for our family – a generational one. A tradition of giving continues to inspire this holiday, and at shelters and food centers, on battlefields and city streets, and through generous donations and silent prayers, the inherent selflessness and common goodness of the American people endures.
In May of this year, I was privileged to spend a few days in the Boston area, accompanied by granddaughter, Blake, and daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Jerald. So there was no pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving. Wrong again. The first permanent settlement was Jamestown, founded in 1607 – more than a decade before the Pilgrims got around to heading this way. He spent several years struggling to get back to his home in Cape Cod. For them, a Day of Thanksgiving was purely religious.
With intolerance of others on display around the world, it is incumbent upon the U.S. to show its tolerance.
Since that time, a Thanksgiving Day has been proclaimed and celebrated periodically throughout our nationhood. Their time had come; mine was over. But the idea of a national Thanksgiving holiday was not Lincoln’s.
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I, myself, am a complete hypocrite in this department. I recalled how my mother and grandmother moved around so painfully during their last holidays too. But – overcome they have; and they followed their feats of bravery, tenacity and faith with thanksgiving to the Almighty who had sustained them and provided for them. Thanksgiving is about sharing with friends and family. Our nation’s vaunted words and ideals haven’t been always been practiced – an economy built on the slave labor of kidnapped people, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the refusal of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, Jim Crow laws – but we don’t like to talk about that. A Spanish expedition party rested and conducted a mass at San Elizario (near El Paso, Texas) in celebration of thanksgiving on April 30, 1598. With terrorism threatening our homeland, racial tensions jeopardizing our national harmony, unsustainable debt endangering our way of life and political rhetoric obscuring both the issues and the answers, we must not forget the blessings that surround us.
