This past Thursday the entirety of America celebrated thanksgiving with it's annual feast, I among them. Contrary to the norm, however, I had eaten a whopping 5 different thanksgiving meals over the course of November (5 if our school's holiday meal can be counted, 4 if not). I think I'll be shying away from turkey for a while. Joking aside, thanksgiving was wonderful this year and it was great to see the family I don't often get to see.
Throughout the 4 family dinners I had eaten, I had given facts that many people do not know about thanksgiving such as the origins of some of it's most popular foods and the fact that turkeys today grow much faster than the turkeys of years past. While my family members were intrigued by the information, it wasn't very surprising to them and the conversation proceeded as normal.
Thanksgiving today, as I'm sure almost every American knows, is a celebration of the supposed feast prepared on the fourth Thursday in November originally celebrated by the "pilgrims" of the Mayflower at Plymouth. They then celebrated it every year afterward.
This thanksgiving is, in fact, a complete myth. While there was a feast that year in the Plymouth colony, it was neither on the fourth Thursday in November nor was it repeated every year. The feast itself wasn't even their thanksgiving; thanksgiving for the puritanical "pilgrims" was actually a religious holiday in which they would go to church and give their thanks to god. The feast had lasted three days long and had been secularly celebrated with the local Wampanoag natives.
Nevertheless, thanksgiving was first made a holiday with our modern day story behind it by Abraham Lincoln. Now, it enjoys popularity and importance in our country just under that of Christmas as seen by the massive amounts of Christmas shopping done on Christmas day and Black Friday. However it came into being, misnomer, misconception or otherwise, thanksgiving is here to stay for as long as american culture remains alive.
Thanksgiving today, as I'm sure almost every American knows, is a celebration of the supposed feast prepared on the fourth Thursday in November originally celebrated by the "pilgrims" of the Mayflower at Plymouth. They then celebrated it every year afterward.
This thanksgiving is, in fact, a complete myth. While there was a feast that year in the Plymouth colony, it was neither on the fourth Thursday in November nor was it repeated every year. The feast itself wasn't even their thanksgiving; thanksgiving for the puritanical "pilgrims" was actually a religious holiday in which they would go to church and give their thanks to god. The feast had lasted three days long and had been secularly celebrated with the local Wampanoag natives.
Nevertheless, thanksgiving was first made a holiday with our modern day story behind it by Abraham Lincoln. Now, it enjoys popularity and importance in our country just under that of Christmas as seen by the massive amounts of Christmas shopping done on Christmas day and Black Friday. However it came into being, misnomer, misconception or otherwise, thanksgiving is here to stay for as long as american culture remains alive.