Thanksgiving: a cornucopia of emotions

The year was 1621. It was a Friday on the Gregorian calendar and a Monday on the Julian calendar. This doesn’t seem to mean anything to inhabitants of the year 2023, at least other than it is Thanksgiving or Turkey Day and a day off for work for many who have a work schedule determined by US holiday. In spite of the common oversight and the fact that true meaning of holidays is often overlooked in light of current times, Thanksgiving does have a deeper meaning.

Sixteen hundred and twenty-one seems so far back for many Americans to even fathom much less have any Idea as to what might have taken place in America or around the world. To sketch lightly on this period, one must include descriptive terms like the Renaissance period which was a movement from the Middle Ages to modernity. Middle Ages, roughly meaning medieval period and modernity basically described as modern period.

From a bird’s eye view and glimpse back in time, one could say these two periods set the stage for the most influential period of a U.S. holiday referred to as Thanksgiving. Easily speculated but often misunderstood is the Age of Discovery which solely by the name seems to indicate that something is or has been discovered or perhaps recorded as so.

This period affecting America is referred to as the Colonization Period. Colonial times as pertaining to Thanksgiving and American traditions can be cobbled into a period that people and culturefromaroundtheglobe where on the move and in search of a better place, an independent way of practicing religion and perhaps simply hope for a better way of life. However, to a vast amount of Native people, this descriptive term had an entirely different meaning.

To set the stage briefly, this leads to the year 1621 in America that had its own plethora of events. A group of multi diverse people referred to as Pilgrims sailing across an open ocean in a ship called the Mayflower wavering storms, hunger, and exhaustion finally hit the shoreline at a place now called Plymouth Rock, naming theareaPlymouthColony in December 1620. These Pilgrims discovered this place for themselves but where certainly not the first to discover it and soon realized that it was inhabited long before they set foot upon it.

There is little to no information written about this Plymouth Rock until about 121 years after the Mayflower landed at its boundary and was then referred to by 94-year-old Thomas Faunce as simply “a great rock”.

Moving months beyond finding the rock, months that lie in the middle of winter one must consider, months that musthavebeenfilledwithendearment, hunger, and perils of matters unfamiliar to newcomers, leads the story and general belief to the Harvest Feast one shared by English colonists. The key word here is shared with the Native American people referred to as Wampanoag people. The Wamponoag people lived and occupied Rhode Island, Martha’sVineyardandmany adjacent Islands. This meal and sort of fellowship most likely would have included a combination of traditional nativefoodandworshipalong with versions associated with colonists.

These bits and pieces of fact and fiction lead to the controversial on many accounts what is also known as the American Holiday Thanksgiving. This day was made official in the year 1863 proposed by Sarah Joseph Hale in hopes to heal a divided nation. Hale proposed the idea to President Lincoln who unopposed officiated the national Holiday as Thanksgiving.

When the facts of Thanksgiving are searched, it seems easy to understand why the Holiday is so controversial and, in some ways, a genocidal anchor. However, one may see this day as official even though a clear meaning has not been established, at least that would be satisfactory to all Americans.

A modern table setting would include food items like, turkey, cranberry, squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and green beans. Each of these included dishes have individual origins, some based on traditional foods available others being an introduced dish.

The cornucopia of origin, culture, and taste is a minute example of what a mixing pot of people who have both inhabited America for centuries and those newly coming can merge for such a holiday. It appears the past, even though cloudy in nature and devised of age-old issues that have yet to be resolved, brings the world to the current Thanksgiving.