Thanksgiving (1660s- ), also known as the National Day of Mourning, is an American holiday that falls on the fourth Thursday of November. Most Americans have off from work. On that day most families gather together to have a big meal and give thanks for the past year.
The story goes that when the Pilgrim Fathers came to America and made it through their first year, they had a big feast and gave thanks.
The Pilgrims, unlike the fishermen in Newfoundland to the north or the tobacco farmers in Virginia to south, did not come to make their fortune and go back home. They came to make a new home.
As it turns out, the experience of the Pilgrims matches that of many families in America: coming to start all over again, to make a better life, whether they came last year or long ago.
What you might eat on Thanksgiving: turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, maize, peas and carrots, pumpkin pie and so on.
Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is a wild bird that the Pilgrims hunted. It tastes like chicken but not quite.
Some big-city stores, like Macy’s in New York, have a Thanksgiving Day parade in the morning with huge balloons, floats, marching bands and, at the very end, Santa Claus. The first Macy’s parade was in 1924.
The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. It is the busiest shopping day of the year, the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. It is called black because that is when most shops start to turn a profit for the year. How well shopkeepers do on that day is seen as a sign of whether good or bad times are to come.
What is now called the First Thanksgiving (Pilgrims were not commonly seen as part of Thanksgiving till the 1890s) was in 1621, sometime between September 21st and November 11th. It lasted for three days. In addition to 50 Pilgrims, 91 Wampanoags, the neighbouring Native American people. It helped to make a peace between them that lasted for 54 years.
What they might have eaten:
- deer meat stew cooked over an outdoor fire,
- spit-roasted wild turkeys stuffed with corn bread,
- oysters baked in their shells,
- sweet corn baked in its husks,
- pumpkin baked in a bag and flavoured with maple syrup,
- popcorn,
- Indian pudding, made from cornmeal and molasses and topped with sweet wine.
No cranberries, no potatoes or sweet potatoes, no forks. That part comes from the late 1800s. No pies or cakes – they had no ovens. Probably no sugar (too expensive).
The holiday took root in New England and parts of the north, but was slow to catch on in the south. President Lincoln made it a government holiday in 1863, falling on the last Thursday of November. Under President Franklin Roosevelt it was made the fourth Thursday.
For Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a bitter reminder of the destruction that followed. So some of them observe a National Day of Mourning or Unthanksgiving Day instead.
– Abagond, 2007, 2017.
See also:
- The truth about the First Thanksgiving
- The speech that Wamsutta James was not allowed to give at Plymouth Rock
- fork
- turkey
- Mystic Massacre – 16 years after the First Thanksgiving, Puritans wipe out Indians to take control of what is now Connecticut.
Way to be a party pooper.
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I have been invited by a nice family to have a nice meal. I am glad there will be no talk of politics, race, or Trump. I will come back home and have a nice glass of wine and watch something on Netflix.
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@Abagond: Happy Thanksgiving 🍁🦃🍽
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The “Pilgrims” aka Puritans did not come to escape religious persecution or make a “better life”. Those reasons are part of the National Myth about the Founders. They weren’t even the first European colony in North America.
The Puritans were the Christian Right of their day. When they had political control of England, they ran roughshod over the rights and traditions of their fellow English. When they finally lost control, (as all tyrants eventually do) the English people basically told them to take a long walk on a short pier.
They migrated to Holland first, but the Dutch were way too fun loving for those religious fanatics. So they decided to steal some land from the Indigenous population of North America. After all, everyone else in Western Europe was doing it.
Those local people helped them through the first years of their settlement. What is generally missing from that feel good story of cooperation is how the Puritans repaid their hosts/targets. According to the site PequotWar.com, Puritan and their Native allies massacred the local population in the gory Mystic Massacre:
http://www.pequotwar.com/history.html
The Puritans also killed their Native “allies” through disease and massacre later.
Fun people. The path to their “City on a Hill” was slippery with the blood of their victims.
My only question is why didn’t we learn this history in elementary school?
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That regional map of Thanksgiving side dishes was hilarious. It reminds me that I never heard of green bean casserole as a Thanksgiving tradition until I read about it in a magazine.
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My only question is why didn’t we learn this history in elementary school?
I don’t know, ahem.
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https://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/11/17/a-harsh-reminder-of-what-really-happened-to-native-americans-as-we-stand-with-standing-rock/?fbclid=IwAR032kHuYWBaPeHJ58B4UADTmZE_45JWGKkbO4XnustTCw2X3CSMI9DiejM
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@ Mary @ All
Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
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@abagond happy thanksgiving! (belated)
it’s was like code switching from hell with my white friends and the ‘woke folk’ on facebook, sheesh, now that’s really confusing!!! jesus h with a three on the tree
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i had to go to 3 different stores a total of about 6 times, but we got it together, and had a nice dinner at home,
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@ v8driver
Happy Belated Thanksgiving!
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@ Herneith
“ahem” indeed.
smile
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The Thanksgiving myth is just like the tale of Christopher Columbus. In Elementary school they taught us a sanitized and white washed lie. And watching television they show all these old television shows with episodes like The Brady Bunch and another animated version of Charlie Brown the so called first Thanksgiving complete with Pilgrims and Indians sitting down having a feast. I did not learn about the truth until i purchased my first laptop in 2004 and discovered the internet and Abagond’s blog. The history books still lie to school children and teach white washed revised history. Those Puritans were murderers. (genocide). Just like Columbus was a murderer of indigenous people.
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That green bean casserole is an abomination. I didn’t see that stuff until i started working in different places with whites when they would bring pot luck spreads. It’s funny how many think pieces on food from different racial groups prepare food.
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I read a think piece awhile back by a Native American blogger and she said that Halloween and Thanksgiving trigger her and make her and upset her. I can empathize with her.
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green bean casserole? it has to have the almond slivers on top! but we had greens instead this year
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Nothing says “Thanksgiving “ than bringing a deadly disease to your family. Especially the elder members. Folks need to stay home.
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