Nowadays, Thanksgiving is usually used as an excuse for food comas, football games, and a jump in capital consumerism with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There's also the idyllic history of nice Pilgrims and friendly Native Americans helping each other out and having a quaint meal together in celebration. However, that history is made up of half-truths and riddled with holes, so here are five myths about Thanksgiving that will be debunked.
1. There wasn't any turkey at Thanksgiving...
...or pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes or basically any other traditional Thanksgiving food we all hold near and dear in our stomachs. This is the 1600's we're talking about here, so it was more along the lines of venison and succotash with no dessert since sugar was quite the luxury.
The reason why turkey became popularized as a Thanksgiving meal was because it was how Victorians celebrated Thanksgiving. This was around the same time that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it a national holiday as a way to unify the country.
2. The Pilgrims and Native Americans weren't good friends
Back then, the Wampanoag tribe occupied Massachusetts, which included Plymouth. Around six years before the Pilgrims arrived, European traders stopped by and ended up spreading smallpox. The disease ended up killing two-thirds of the Wampanoag population, with many more being kidnapped and sold into slavery by the aforementioned traders.
Enter the Pilgrims, who settled in Patuxet, a Wampanoag village that was abandoned due to the smallpox outbreak. Due to poor planning and lack of wildlife experience, the Pilgrims stole from the graves and cornfields of the remaining Wampanoags in order to survive. At best, the Pilgrims and Wampanoags were political allies since they were both struggling to make ends meet.
3. Squanto didn't learn English to help the Pilgrims
Squanto—also known as Tisquantum—was from Patuxet, and although he didn't die from smallpox, he was shipped off to Spain as a slave. However, he eventually learned English and escaped. He found his way back to Patuxet only to realize that he was the sole survivor of his village, which eventually became taken over by the Pilgrims.
Squanto's relationship with the remaining Wampanoags was rocky since they regarded him with suspicion. So when Squanto agreed to help out the settlers, tensions started mounting between all of them, making the whole affair quite uncomfortable.
4. The "first Thanksgiving" wasn't the first...
...and it wasn't even called "Thanksgiving" since it was actually a three-day harvest celebration. If it really was a thanksgiving meal with all the religious connotation included, there would have been neither fun and games nor any gorging on food, since it would have been seen as disrespectful to God.
5. Thanksgiving wasn't actually celebrated to give thanks
Unfortunately, this is where the really ugly side of history comes out. Back in 1637, a Puritan settlement called the Massachusetts Bay Colony regarded the Native Americans as uncivilized heathens. As a result, Colony Governor John Winthrop issued an attack on a Pequot village in present-day Mystic, Connecticut, massacring over 700 Pequot men, women, and children. When the colonists returned from the bloodshed, Winthrop declared a "Thanksgiving" for their safe return.
Although disputed, many historians claim that this incident is where the true celebratory nature of Thanksgiving originates from.
Do all of these facts mean we shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving? Well, not exactly. Since then, Thanksgiving has largely outgrown its history and solidified itself as a day that embodies thankfulness, quality time with family, and great food. But this doesn't give us the right to alter events to our liking to make everything seem like rainbows and sunshine. The abuse that the Native Americans suffered at the hands of early colonists still strongly affects them to this day, and that should not go unnoticed. We need to approach our history with honesty and open-mindedness, accepting our faults and finding a way to move on and make things right.
So the next time you sit down for some turkey and pumpkin pie, think about what Thanksgiving really means and why it matters to you.
