What Happened to Thanksgiving?

A few days after Halloween, I went to the store to get some decorations for our family Thanksgiving celebration. They didn’t have any. It was as if Thanksgiving had been deleted. I found aisle after aisle of Christmas decorations, but nothing for Thanksgiving. I wonder if schools have deleted Thanksgiving as well. When I was in grade school, we read the stories of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. We were familiar with the love story of Priscilla and John Alden. Pocahontas was an actual native who convinced her father to befriend the Pilgrims instead of killing them. As we advanced in school, we studied the history of the first European settlers. There were 102 passengers on the Mayflower seeking religious freedom, and they hoped to find it in Virginia. Their party was made up of idealists, but no farmers, carpenters or craftsmen. They did almost everything wrong. They sailed late, got lost and landed in what is now Massachusetts at the beginning of winter. Forty-five died of exposure and malnutrition, leaving only 57 survivors of that first winter. They did one thing right, however. They were outside the charter granted by King James, so they decided to write their own common rules. This masterful document became known as The Mayflower Compact and was the original ordinance of democratic self-government. It became the foundation for our Constitution.

It is fashionable in today’s climate of political correctness to blame the Pilgrims for displacing the natives. That isn’t true. They chose the site of their original camp because it was not occupied. Later settlers pushed the natives ahead of them, but those who arrived on the Mayflower came in peace. In truth, the Pilgrims were too weak to be a threat to anyone. The local chief sent two of his tribe who spoke English to help them. Squanto and Samoset taught the Pilgrims to build shelters and plant crops. Without their help, there would be no Thanksgiving to celebrate. The first harvest in the new land was sufficient to take care of basic community needs for the second winter with enough left over for a party. There were more natives in attendance than European settlers. The 57 immigrants were indebted to their neighbors. The survival of the colony was a joint effort, thus it was celebrated jointly at the first Thanksgiving.

As the trickle of European settlers grew into a flood, the natives were overwhelmed, and became victims of a conflict of cultures. Conflicts of cultures are as old as recorded history. The Persians pushed out the Assyrians, then the Greeks overthrew the Persians, then the Romans… and it still goes on. The Native Americans that helped the colonists on the Mayflower were a stone age culture. The Pilgrims brought metal tools, iron cooking pots, and gunpowder. At that point, Native American culture was doomed. It was not the colonists’ fault, nor was it the natives’ fault. It was inevitable.

I realize big box stores make half their income during the 30 days before Christmas. The biggest shopping day of the year is the Friday after Thanksgiving. We have even given the day a name, Black Friday. Surely we can wait until then to begin the Christmas season. I saw Santa Claus in stores less than two weeks after Halloween. When we ignore the contribution of those who sailed unprepared into an unknown land, we chance losing a connection to the birthplace of American democracy. It would be a shame to lose the history of 57 starving settlers and their indigenous friends. It shouldn’t matter whether your ancestors were European, Asian, African or were already here when the Mayflower landed. We should honor their rightful place in our history. Those idealistic Pilgrims laid the foundation of the American dream.

Let's not lose Thanksgiving because of misplaced political correctness, nor sacrifice it on the alter of commercialism. Let us pause and give thanks for our beginnings.

(Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and a long time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free lance columnist for over 18 years.)