Thanksgiving is a widely celebrated and known holiday. It is mainly recognized for its celebration of gratitude, thankfulness, and family. However, the origin behind the holiday is not what it seems.
We all are familiar with the story of Thanksgiving: English colonists came to America in 1621 and shared a harvest feast with the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag people had helped the English colonists survive the harsh winter by teaching them how to farm crops. The story is heartwarming and sweet. Thanksgiving became a national holiday much later, officially proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the Civil War.
Thanksgiving is loved by many- but not all. Many argue that Thanksgiving as a holiday stems from a celebration of colonization rather than a celebration of the shared feast- just another day for American superiority. Due to extreme colonization, all the Natives in America were eventually pushed out of their homes, and many historical laws such as the Dawes Act and the Indian Removal Act represent this act of superiority and neglect. Many argue that Americans had no right to colonize and push the Natives off of their land.
Aside from the violent history of colonism, oppression and displacement of Native Americans, the Thanksgiving controversy does not stop there. Critics also point out the shocking contrast between Thursday- Thanksgiving- and Friday- Black Friday, a hyper-consumeristic day that encourages spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on ‘sale’ prices. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day of gratitude, happiness and wholeness, but the next day, the narrative flips completely. Black Friday is widely considered the biggest sale day of the year, which doesn’t feel right, since not even 24 hours before, the entire country was celebrating thankfulness. Critics argue that the so-called thankfulness does not run deep.
Consumerism and overconsumption in the US is another can of worms to not be opened, but it’s one of the biggest problems in America, and Black Friday only encourages this craze of over-consumerism and over-consumption. Even Cyber Monday adds to this issue, which seems to be growing and worsening each year.
Some say that Thanksgiving is a great holiday because it promotes family time. But Christmas does the same thing, and while presents are a big part of Christmas, many families are more deliberate about their spending during the holidays, where Thanksgiving promotes spontaneous last-minute purchases.
While the concept of Thanksgiving is a great idea, and the holiday would ideally be a good thing for the country, the reality is that Thanksgiving does not improve the US, it does the opposite by increasing sales, over-consumption and mass consumerism– not to mention the grim and dark history of American colonization and Native American neglect. Thanksgiving needs to be rethought and remade to be the holiday it was originally meant to be.
