It's always nice to have a harvest festival—although most of us live in cities, far from farmlands, and eat produce from innumerable harvests all over the world!
It's
also nice to have a day set aside to be thankful about the good
things in our lives.
However,
some people do not see Thanksgiving as a happy holiday that harkens
back to a wonderful feast enjoyed by “Pilgrims” and “Indians,”
cooking and eating together in peace. Some people see it as a day to
regret the way things turned out for the native peoples who lived in
the Plymouth area and elsewhere in the Americas. Instead of gathering
together with family over a roasted turkey and televised football,
they gather together to hear speeches about the truth behind the
mythologized Pilgrim/Indian feast.
Since
1970, these gatherings have been called the National Day of Mourning.
This is not how it was at the first Thanksgiving! |
Massasoit was the leader of the Wampanoag tribe. |
According to Turquoise Butterfly, the Wampanoag brought most of the food eaten during the meeting, because that was what their culture dictated as the polite thing to do.
To
learn more...
...about
the history of Thanksgiving, check out this earlier post.
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