Thanks, but No Thanks

Harvest festivals go back a long way, and are common among many different Peoples who lived close enough to the Earth that they understood how precarious life is, and how blessed they were that Nature provided for their needs.

It’s a good thing.

A humble thing.

But don’t confuse the Harvest Festival with Thanksgiving Day.

It’s true that the Indians shared food with the Pilgrims – otherwise all the Pilgrims would have starved.

But “The First Thanksgiving” had nothing to do with Pilgrims and Indians sitting around a table together for a turkey dinner with all the fixin’s.

It was proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre, near what is now Groton, Connecticutt, of 700 Indian men, women and children who were celebrating their annual green corn dance- a harvest festival, or “thanksgiving” if you prefer.

They were gathered in their meeting house when they were attacked by Dutch and English (and Blackwater-style mercenaries). The Indians were ordered to come out, and when they came out, they were shot down.

Those that didn’t come out were burned alive inside the building. (Think: Waco, Texas.)

The next 100 “Thanksgiving” celebrations were to celebrate this event.

The sanitized myth of the “First Thanksgiving” emerged in the middle of the 1800’s.

That “official story” became an official national holiday in 1941.

Don’t get me wrong.

I believe you should always be thankful for what you’ve got.

Every second you're alive is a gift.

Every day should be "thanksgiving" day.

And I’m absolutely in favor of getting together with people you love and sharing a communal feast, and counting your blessings. Hell, maybe you might even share some food with a hard-up stranger, the way the Indians did with those starving Pilgrims.

What I don't believe in is celebrating on command to perpetuate a self-serving lie that simultaneously facilitated and denied the merciless genocide that the greedy elite of the United States perpetrated against the Indians in America, in much the same way and for much the same reason – profits – that they are murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

So when it comes to Thanksgiving, I sincerely say, "get stuffed."

sj