Thanksgiving has to be one of the most hypocritical holidays of all time. We are taught in grade school that the Puritans of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts were grateful to Squanto, the Native American and former British slave, because he taught them how to catch eel, grow corn, and acted as their native American interpreter. Because of that the pilgrims set apart a holiday immediately after their first harvest in 1621. They then proceded to party with the Grand Sachem Massasoit and Wampanoag Native Americans and give thanks to god. That is all pretty much horse poop.
Let’s start off with the Puritans themselves, and who they really were. This is a from Thomas Mather, the leader of the Puritans, who is reported to have said this on Thanksgiving day:
“In a Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in 1623, Thomas Mather, an elder, gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague that wiped out most of the native Wampanoag Indians. Mather added in his sermon that he praised God for destroying chiefly the young men and the children, whom he described as the “very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth.”
Does that sound very appreciative to the Native Americans? The Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the Church of England, they were outcasts and fugitives who came to the new world to establish a “Holy Kingdom”. To do so they would perpetuate the extermination of 90% of the native inhabitants. We are celebrating a group of people who started a genocide of people and relished in it.
The real reason behind the first Thanksgiving feast was to negotiate a treaty for land that would give the Pilgrims time to build their army. One night in 1637, without provocation, Gov. Bradford, the commander of the colony, sent his militia against his Indian neighbors. The soldiers conducted a surprise assault and while the village slept, every man, woman and child was killed. Oh and did I mention that the Indians brought most of the food for that first feast?
The only reason we have Thanksgiving as a holiday is because Abraham Lincoln in 1863 thought it would be a great morale boost for the Civil War soldiers. Even the legend about the Pilgrims (Puritans) wasn’t even created till the late 1800s.
Oh and just one more fun little fact, the first ship to bring slaves to the colonies from Africa was the Mayflower. Chew on that the next time you see a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.