Thanksgiving: Yay or Nay?

Thanksgiving is a holiday only celebrated in the USA. It’s a historical holiday made to honor our country’s upbringing. In recent years Americans all over have been starting to question its roots.  Is this really the type of celebration we want to take a part of?

For a moment let’s think back to the raging hellfire we called “2020”. Everyone, forced inside and having nothing to do but scroll endlessly through the Internet, took to their keyboards and Tiktok and did what we do best. Pretend to care about issues we are poorly educated on. So, like it does some parts of the Internet were in an uproar about the colonizer backstory behind Thanksgiving. Not a lot of these people took the time to educate themselves and properly speak on it. So, without further ado I present to you; Thanksgiving Yay or Nay?

If you’re reading this, you probably have some idea of the history behind Thanksgiving; it was forced into your brain starting in first grade. The European settlers had come to America totally unprepared; they had no idea how to farm in the new soil; no idea what was edible and what wasn’t. So, the Native Americans worked along side them and they all had a huge fall feast before winter arrived. Now, we have a big feast in fall before winter arrives to celebrate prosperity. But is that really the true FULL story? Not even close.

I’m sure you’re probably aware of what colonizing is; you’re also probably aware of how this typically isn’t associated as a good thing. To this day the roots of indigenous people are lost, their land is gone, and their populations are low. This is because of the what settlers did to their populations. If you’re anything like me that’s a big no-no in your book, but is it really fair to judge these settlers by today’s standards? I mean yes, they did some horrible things to the native people, but in their time that was normal, that was just life. I’m not by any means excusing what they did but to their people they were heroes, clearing their new homes of these “ignorant savages.” To be a truly successful colony you have to colonize.

So, the colonist wiped out natives. In a multitude of ways. You didn’t want to do as the colonist said? They’d kill you. You got a little to close to the colonist home base? They’d kill you. You need some of the rescrouces the colonist are taking and using all on themselves? The starvation killed you. Your body wasn’t strong enough to withstand the diseases the colonist brought; guess what? It killed you.  Colonists did a lot worse to the natives, but since is the school newspaper I can’t really go into great detail.

Have you noticed the indigenous people whose ancestors survived don’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Even though in the story we’ve always been told they helped the colonists survive. There’s probably a reason for this, and if I had to guess it has something to do with the history we’ve chosen to ignore.

If the people we were always taught were the heroes of the story don’t celebrate this holiday, then should we?