The real meaning of Thanksgiving has morphed a great deal throughout my life.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful or rain on anyone’s parade here. But I must admit, my current understanding of Thanksgiving is not a “pretty” one. But it works for me because it closes the cognitive dissonance between truth and lies, and that is very important to me.

For some reason, I have a deep-seated interest in the truth. Things feel best to me when they make sense. At a minimum, I prefer dealing with a reality that is honest.
So what is Thanksgiving to me, after over 5 decades on this planet?

Warning: I’m not going to mince words here, so if it’s your favorite holiday, you may want to read someone else’s essay. This will not be a comforting experience for you.

Let’s ease our way into this.

What do the following holiday characters have in common?

Santa clause
The Easter bunny
The tooth fairy
“White” Jesús

THEY ARE ALL FABRICATED LIES.

Sure, some are more benign than others, but all fantasy, nonetheless.

Then there’s Thanksgiving.

Is it just another fabricated lie that shapes American culture, kind of like Columbus, the founding father’s unscrutinized greatness and big foot?

Is there any truth to the Thanksgiving stories most of us have grown up with?

Most people in the United States are raised hearing the story of the first Thanksgiving. They learn a story about the pilgrims who couldn’t grow crops to survive and the native people who helped them learn to farm and then feasted with them in celebration.

Sounds like a good time, right?

As a kid, I don’t recall questioning the story too much at Thanksgiving. I was more worried about if the table the kids would sit at was attached to the adult table or if we’d be sequestered to another room altogether for Thanksgiving. That always hurt my feelings for some reason.

Then one day, I learned about the genocide.

It took me a while to connect the two together, but I eventually did.

“We had a big feast of a party with the natives and then promptly began killing them all.”  

Something didn’t feel quite right about this. Ya think? That’s some truly barbaric history!

For a few decades, I pondered this, but only around Thanksgiving.

It sure sounded like I’d been fooled. But I didn’t know any native people. The internet hadn’t been invented yet. As a privileged “white” person living in the USA, I didn’t have to think about this, so I didn’t. I figured there must be some truth about Thanksgiving, but there were likely a lot of ugly parts left out. Thanksgiving became more of a ritual that we were obligated to perform. I loved eating, so I spent many years never seriously questioning it.

One day during a Native American studies class I was taking in college, the professor came to the front of the roughly 100 “white” students and said, “THANKSGIVING, THANKS FOR NOTHING.” He said it really loudly. He said it just before Thanksgiving break.

We all sat there in silence. It was a little shocking. I’d never heard anyone say the ugly part out loud like that. But then again, I’d never heard a real Native American speak in person before, either.

Up until that point, I thought I was the only one who had ever thought of the holiday as a sort of “slap in the face” to native folks. I was barely 18 years old. I’d lived my entire life with “white” people. My family never talked about this type of thing. What did I know?

Well, I was definitely listening now. The professor told us the story of how some native people feel about Thanksgiving. I left the class with my head spinning. But not out of guilt. There was just a lot to take in. It was all starting to make sense now. I’d just never heard anyone criticize or, for that matter, even scrutinize Thanksgiving before.

I needed to let that lecture sink in… It really did make more sense now.

So once in a while, over the next few years, I tried to make sense of this newfound dissonance.

“We had a lovely feast with them. They helped us survive and THEN WE KILLED THEM ALL (well, almost all).”

It didn’t feel right… not one single bit. In fact, the more I thought about it… I thought, “That’s some really messed up history, dang!”  

I wondered, “Why do we still celebrate like that? Is the Thanksgiving story even true? Or had we done such barbaric, unthinkable things to the native nations that lived on our land before we colonized it that a story had to be made up to cover the atrocities?” This was the head-spinning part I spoke of earlier.  

Here’s what I discovered:

I’ve found that there is no universal source that will tell me the truth. K-12 schools in the USA aren’t going to tell me.

The truth is out there in books and scholarly articles, … It’s in academia but definitely not in modern American culture or most K-12 schools in the United States.

Today, most of America just wants a day off from work so they can feast on a delicious meal and then stick their tummies in the air and maybe, if they’re lucky, have some leftovers. If they’re really lucky, they have family or friends who eat with them and have some good conversation.

So, here’s my conclusion:

It doesn’t matter how I feel about Thanksgiving.

All that matters is the truth and real history.

I’m fairly certain that the general public will never know the truth about Thanksgiving because it’s most likely a really awful story. There’s a huge pushback to make sure the truth is not exposed.

Today, after witnessing states in the US refuse to teach or even recognize our real racial history surrounding the enslavement of millions of human beings of African descent, forbidding students and teachers from talking about our real racial history, and instead, putting out propaganda lies as curriculum, why would I think Thanksgiving is anything different?

But all is not lost. How I feel about Thanksgiving may be a moot point. But what does matter for those of us who seek the truth is how the tribe who helped the pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving feel. They have living descendants. It is their feelings, stories, and cultural truths that matter, certainly not mine. 

So, if you are interested in finding out what the descendants of the people who helped the pilgrims survive their first Thanksgiving think… You know, the ones that helped us survive so Europeans could sail back over, take over the land, colonize North America, and commit genocide to its people, please read this Washington Post Article. It’s called, This Tribe Helped the Pilgrims Survive for their First Thanksgiving. They Still Regret it 400 Years Later. Because somewhere out there, the truth still exists. It’s just a matter of how badly we want to find it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/04/thanksgiving-anniversary-wampanoag-indians-pilgrims/