In the United States, we all grow up with the story of the First Thanksgiving between the Pilgrims who came from England and settled at Plymouth Rock and the Wampanoag, the people who were already there. There was probably some kind of feast celebrating survival and harvest and the Wampanoag did join in.
But while there were various proclamations holding thanksgiving celebrations throughout the colonial years and in the first years of the United States itself, the root of the holiday we celebrate today comes from the Civil War and is a celebration of the victory over the enslavers’ rebellion. Since I grew up in Texas, which was part of the rebellion, I don’t know if this was ever mentioned in schools in other parts of the country, but it certainly wasn’t in mine.
As we reckon with our true history, it seems more appropriate to me today to focus on the celebration of defeating those who set out to undermine our democracy rather than myths from early colonizers that try to sanitize their relationships with the people whose land they were on. This is particularly true today when we are struggling with efforts to destroy all that’s good about our country from people who share the views of the enslavers who rebelled in 1861.
Heather Cox Richardson has an excellent essay on this. Go and read and ponder how we should protect our democracy today.
And give thanks for democracy while you’re at it.
As foolish as it sounds, I don’t think I’d ever considered how frightening it must have been to be an American in 1860–part of a nation that was, by its nature, an experiment, seeing the possibility of it all falling apart. And surviving, nonetheless. Thank you for this.
I don’t think I did either, in spite of having spent a chunk of my youth reading about the Civil War. Perhaps the people of the time were thinking “oh, it won’t get that bad” and planning on continuing the status quo, kind of like we are now. That’s a scary thought.
I think it would be politically good to look at Thanksgiving as the holiday that celebrates the triumph of democracy over oligarchy in the Civil War, especially as accompanied by the constitutional amendments that followed, particularly the 14th Amendment. That could be a step toward building the country we should be.