Tradition, Opportunities, Controversies
What was the actual fare at the inaugural feast in 1621 is a matter of reconstructed record and conjecture but its religious overtones were never in doubt, indelibly imprinted as they were on the proceedings. Today, in most American households, the Thanksgiving celebration has lost much of its original religious significance; instead, it now centres on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends.
Turkey, a Thanksgiving staple so ubiquitous that it is synonymous with the holiday, was likely on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the feast. This tradition continues undiluted. Nearly 90 percent of Americans eat the bird—whether roasted, baked or deep-fried—on Thanksgiving. Other traditional foods include stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Volunteering is a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often hold food drives and host free dinners for the poorly provisioned.
Colourful and musical Parades have also become an integral part of the holiday in cities and towns across the United States. Presented by Macy’s department store since 1924, New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is the largest and most famous, attracting some 2 to 3 million spectators along its 2.5-mile route and drawing a huge television audience. It typically features marching bands, performers, elaborate floats and giant balloons shaped like cartoon characters.
Sometime around the middle of 20th Century, one of the Presidents of US began the practice of pardoning one or two Thanksgiving Turkeys and sparing them from being slaughtered for the feast at the White House. They were sent to the farmhouse. The practice caught on and in addition to the president, many Governors followed suit. Many find it a shallow show of compassion!
Black Friday
Black Friday is a term as common as Thanksgiving itself. Given the genius, proclivity and penchant of Americans for all that can earn money, the Thanksgiving festival has seen ingenious innovations in terms of retail commerce. It is a colloquial term for the Friday after Thanksgiving when many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States.
The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” though had very negative connotation. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On September 24, 1869, a Friday, the conspiracy finally became public, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
The most commonly repeated story, however, behind the Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. This version of Black Friday’s origin is the officially sanctioned story though inaccurate.
In recent years, another myth has surfaced that gives a particularly ugly twist to the tradition, claiming that back in the 1800s Southern plantation owners could buy enslaved workers at a discount on the day after Thanksgiving. Though this version of Black Friday’s roots has understandably led some to call for a boycott of the retail holiday, it has no basis in fact.
Thanksgiving Controversies
Some Native Americans and many others take issue with how the Thanksgiving story is presented to the American public, and especially to schoolchildren. In their view, the traditional narrative paints a deceptively sunny portrait of relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, masking the long and bloody history of conflict between Native Americans and European settlers that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. Since 1970, protesters have gathered on the day designated as Thanksgiving at the top of Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning.” Similar events are held in other parts of the country.
Another controversy is about the first Thanksgiving being the one at Plymouth. Indeed, historians have recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America that predate the Pilgrims’ celebration. In 1565, for instance, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé invited members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. On December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, they read a proclamation designating the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
Irrespective of what history records, Thanksgiving falls under a category of festivals that spans cultures, continents and millennia. In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans feasted and paid tribute to their gods after the fall harvest. Thanksgiving also bears a resemblance to the ancient Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. Finally, historians have noted that Native Americans had a rich tradition of commemorating the fall harvest with feasting and merrymaking long before Europeans set foot on America’s shores.
A Perspective to Ponder
The Mayflower Compact may be hailed as an early, successful attempt at democracy, the events that followed were far from noble or principled.
Thanksgiving may have been a feast to appreciate the help given by native Indians to Pilgrims in their survival and establishment in the ‘New World’, but the sentiment soon gave way to rivalry and designs of of subjugation and dominance, and a looming threat to their existence, even annihilation.
The centuries between 15th and 19th of human history will be ever remembered for the naked and unashamed colonization, imperialism and expansionism. Mostly through warfare and frequently using unprincipled and opportunistic diplomacy, the objective was to gain more land and resources to fuel their own growth and prosperity back home. Religion and a presumption of civilising the world offered a convenient and moral excuse for the excesses and injustices imposed on native populations.
Native Americans soon got into a complicated relationship with European settlers. Around the time Mayflower reached the shores of America, there was already a scramble for the lands in the ‘New World’. And so fierce and intense was this ambition that the many virtues of their political and social evolution were completely disregarded in this unethical quest.
Native Americans resisted the efforts of Europeans to gain more of their territory and control. But what worked against them were new diseases that the Europeans brought with them against which they had no immunity, the slave trade, the alliances that set them against each other, and of course, the ever-growing population of settlers who also brought with them the military and superior might of their own land.
Alliances with the colonisers were another phenomenon that ensured their complete subjugation and marginalisation. The rival European powers forged alliances with different tribes. The best example was the French and Indian War of 1754-63. The English allied with the Iroquois tribe while the French and Spanish with Algonquin speaking tribes. English won and got the territory east of Mississippi river, part of which was to go the Native Tribe. Predictably, it was only a temporary arrangement before being taken over completely. The alliances resulted in native Americans fighting the neighbouring tribes, causing rifts and preventing them to work collectively against the European takeover.
The Thanksgiving, therefore, needs to be remembered not only for the sentiment and spirit it seeks to demonstrate so warmly, but for the treacherous and devious nature of violent conquests of native tribes that soon ensued. In one sense, the celebration only became a contrived symbol of a sublime human sentiment to the exclusion of dark and destructive designs that became evident soon afterwards.
And Finally
Many people report feeling drowsy after eating a Thanksgiving meal. Turkey often gets blamed because it contains tryptophan, an amino acid that can have a somnolent effect. But studies suggest it’s the carbohydrate-rich sides and desserts that allow tryptophan to enter the brain.
But no body blames the over-indulgence at the best meal of the year. In true American tradition, tips to deal with these excesses dutifully appear in newspapers the day following Thanksgiving feast.
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