For college students, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to take a “break” for a few days before the semester races to a close. “Break” is in quotation marks because you’ll be so overloaded with final papers, exam preparation, football, parades and shopping that the only thing you might actually get a break from is laundry.
It’s also an opportunity for us to field the questions we love about what we’re doing with our lives after college from every relative imaginable, from your parents on down to the aunts, uncles and cousins.
I’m kidding. Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite holiday, and one that I often feel forced to defend. Increasingly, a day once known for handprint-turkeys and big hats with buckles on them has been recast as a reminder of our nation’s long history of mistreatment of Native Americans.
The United American Indians of New England annually stage a protest on the fourth Thursday in November, which they call “National Day of Mourning” for fallen natives. The first UAINE protest in 1970 included burying Plymouth Rock and boarding the Mayflower to remove the flag flying from its mast. The flyers for this year’s demonstration contain a depiction of a native asking, “Who’s the illegal alien, PILGRIM?”
Many elements of the story of the first Thanksgiving aren’t true. The buckles, for instance, were not actually a popular fashion until later in the 17th century. And the 1621 Plymouth feast wasn’t really the first Thanksgiving, as colonists in Virginia had celebrated a Thanksgiving in December 1619, before the Mayflower had even set sail.
But accounts of the Pilgrims as white invaders are overblown. Keep in mind that the term “Pilgrims” refers to the members of the separatist Leiden church aboard the Mayflower—not the other Mayflower passengers, not their descendents, not the later settlers in the Plymouth Colony and not settlers in the then-separate Massachusetts Bay Colony.
There were no Pilgrims fighting in King Philips’ War in 1675, 55 years after their arrival in Plymouth. And the smallpox epidemic that wiped out much of the native population of the northeast preceded the Pilgrims’ arrival by two years. By all surviving accounts, the Pilgrims themselves had good relations with their native neighbors. Maybe I’m nitpicking—what’s in a name?—but calling all white settlers “Pilgrims” as the UAINE do is akin to calling all the natives in the area “Nasset” or “Patuxet,” a mistake the Pilgrims would not have made.
Before you write off Thanksgiving, consider this chapter of its history. In 1863, with the nation embroiled in Civil War, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the widely popular Godey’s Lady Book, saw the New England tradition as one that could provide sanity for an insane country. Her letters and editorials about Thanksgiving caught the attention of President Abraham Lincoln, who issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving to recognize the nation’s successes and commonalities “with one heart and voice by the whole American people.” The holiday has been celebrated every year since.
American Indians have faced discrimination for hundreds of years. But the problem is not Thanksgiving or its symbols. If you want to protest a holiday, Columbus Day seems the more fitting choice: a celebration of the man who brought smallpox and slavery to the “New” World. Thanksgiving’s history, like most of American history, is not squeaky-clean, but its underlying message is one that should transcend race. The spirit of the day is to appreciate and share what you do have, however much or little.
Of course, there’s another group of people that consider the day’s feast a symbol of the gluttony of our increasingly-obese nation, a perfect prelude to the Christmas shopping season that epitomizes the American obsession with consumerism. That’s a tough charge, too, but again, the point of Thanksgiving is neither the food nor the Black Friday sales. Thanksgiving is a time for reflecting on all the things in our lives for which we ought to be thankful.
I’m thankful for this University and all the things I like about it—starting with the fine members of the faculty, staff and administration who put students first. I’m thankful for ePrint, Cheerwine, the C-6 and the commitment to free speech that allowed creationism advocates to distribute propaganda disguised as Charles Darwin’s “Origins of the Species” on the Plaza last week. Although I don’t necessarily respect the presentation here (much as I don’t respect burying Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving), I respect the right to share controversial views and challenge people’s thinking.
I’m thankful for the start of basketball season and for the most successful football season in my four years here.
I’m thankful for the men and women serving our nation in the armed forces overseas.
And I’m thankful for my friends and family, our health and our optimism.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Bradford Colbert is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Monday.
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