What Schools Don’t Teach You: The Real Story of Thanksgiving

Americans worldwide sit down together each November, enjoying a meal made from love with mouths filled with gratitude and thankfulness. The holiday of Thanksgiving is often known for its family-centered traditions of giving without expecting anything in return. But how on earth did this beloved tradition even come to be? It all starts with a story that has been twisted and retold over centuries and generations. Between cultural and spiritual perspectives within the roots of the historical events, how people have celebrated Thanksgiving has stayed the same all these years. Many Americans remember the nostalgic haze of the childhood activities they did growing up in classrooms, or the big family gatherings centered around a turkey dinner. Thanksgiving holds a special place in the tradition of America, but its origins deserve a deeper, more ethical explanation. By taking a better look at the Thanksgiving story kids around the world are taught growing up, questions arise about what the Thanksgiving feast really is meant to be celebrating.
The story told in most classrooms around America about Thanksgiving has always been pretty simple: A group of pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution from Europe, sail to the seas of Northern America settling on Plymouth Rock. Here is where the Pilgrims suffered through a hard winter. Adapting to harsh climates they’d never seen before, many pilgrims died from disease or starvation during this time until spring arrived. A successful harvest hit them as they learned to care for the soil and farm correctly from their Native neighbors. In the end, they celebrated the harvest through a big feast in the autumn of 1621. Over 90 Wampanoaeg joined 52 English colonists in what is known today as the “First Thanksgiving,” only they didn’t call it that back then. Here they gathered eating foods like venison, ducks, corn, nuts, and seafood joined with a variety of fruits & veggies like squash, carrots, and peas. For activities, men would run races, and play with barrels and guns. Altogether, everyone drank liquor and beer, ate food, and conversed in broken English & Wampanoag. This marked a treaty being signed between the two groups after a war, bringing them close together. Thanksgiving was later officially established as a national Holiday by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to “give thanks back after a year of deadly battles during the Civil War.” Thanksgiving unified the nation that was deeply deprived of gratitude and needed healing. The holiday set aside a day for prayer and reflection as people got together with their families and focused on the blessings of being thankful for what they have now.
In classrooms, Thanksgiving is seen as an annual event. Kids around America dress up for the occasion, proudly taking the roles of an Indian or Pilgrim. The day usually starts full of arts & crafts; Children eagerly cut construction paper to make Indian headbands with paper feathers glued on and cloth Pilgrim hats, representing the two kinds of communities Using materials like cotton balls, jewels, and paper bags. Here they’d intimitate how Indians had to make clothes from scratch, using every part of an animal they’d hunt not only out of respect for the life the animal gave but also because of scarce resources. Teachers share lessons on the Pilgrims coming to America, the hardships they faced, and getting accustomed to the environment, as well as the Native Americans teaching them the essentials of farming and survival skills. Students were fed this simplified version of history– a peaceful portrayal of what really happened. At lunch, freshly cooked meals were made from the hands of the cafeteria staff, a meal that rarely accurately depicted what was actually eaten at the original Harvest celebration. Foods like turkey, corn, mashed potatoes, and gravy, topped with a slice of pumpkin pie were made for the kids. As children receive their meals and sit around the long cafeteria tables, they share laughs as they indulge in the goodness of the meal while thinking back on what life might have been like as a Native American or Pilgrim. Back then, roles were assigned and these were often limited to the happy stereotypes that allowed young students to imagine the two parties coming together with seemingly no trouble at all. At such a young age, this version of Thanksgiving seems to be most appropriate for them. “We want to talk about being grateful and being thankful and showing that peace. That people can come together no matter what. So I think those are good lessons that we teach but as we get older I don’t know if the history of Thanksgiving is talked about much,” art teacher, Stacy Bell. For young kids to truly honor the holiday appropriately, it’s important to offer a positive narrative that encourages the gratitude, unity, and friendship of Thanksgiving. At such a young age, children don’t need to understand the specific details that led up to the harvest feast, but that it happened and marked off the end of a conflict, in doing this helps set them up for future education of understanding what really happened once reaching an older age.
The historical reality of the 1621 feast is far from ideal. Yes, Pilgrims and Native people did share a meal in autumn, but the event wasn’t the start of everlasting peace. It became far more complicated and tragic than the narrative portrayed today in education or Hollywood. The pilgrims, living in England, were Separatists, meaning they wanted to be completely separate from the Church of England. Their beliefs in choosing who they want to represent their church and ministers. Under the rule of King James whose policies favored remnants of Catholicism, and often overlooked the views of the Pilgrims. Pilgrims saw the church as beyond reformed as they sought to leave England in search of a community where they could freely practice their faith without fear of persecution. Initially, the Pilgrims fled to Amsterdam, Holland but were met with even more difficulties like poverty, warfare threats, and hard labor. Thus, Pilgrims started boarding the Mayflower in 1620, setting sail from Southampton England on August 15, 1620. The Mayflower’s voyage from Plymouth, England to Cape Cod, Massachusetts took exactly 66 days, more than two months. During the journey on the sea, they had to turn back twice as a speedwell leak had erupted. Throughout the actual life on the Mayflower, conditions were less than ideal. Many died of disease or basic malnutrition before even arriving in America. When first arriving, The pilgrims were unprepared for the harsh conditions of the weather they weren’t used to, and many fell ill from exposure or disease. However, they weren’t alone and had arrived on already inhabited land by indigenous people. This included their neighbors, the Wampanoag Tribe.
The Pilgrims spent six weeks in the harsh winter conditions with more than half of their people dying off. This causes them to go to the Wampanoag tribe in need. Here they helped the pilgrims learn to take care of their poor hygiene, and farmland correctly, and build houses that would last through winter. It wasn’t always just roses and joy from here on out. “Mostly was a tale of survival because we’re not accustomed to the climate around here and Native Americans would help us survive because they have lived on the land, but then you know, we repay them by basically killing off their population,” Timothy Buckley, Teacher at Rochester notes. A speculation within the village of a man being killed by a Wampanoag. This caused what was thought to be a “retaliation” to occur resulting in the Pequot War in 1637. Here settlers would call out to Native Tribes, telling them they’d be spared if they came out and surrendered. The men who came out to fight were shot and killed immediately while the women and children inside were burned. It wasn’t just because of the retaliation though, the desire for the land and England diseases started to spread and kill off Natives, this caused a power imbalance to occur, inciting these violent conflicts to happen. After these “successful” genocides of Native American tribes, Colonists often declared the next days to be considered “thanksgiving”, celebrating the brutal massacres they invoked on innocent people. The history of their brutal attacks and acts of violence can be recorded in King Philip’s War from 1675-1676 but can be seen to have been happening way before that time and even after.
Overall, the version of Thanksgiving traditionally taught in public schools across America often leaves out the critical parts of history that make the European people look bad. While focused mainly on how much the pilgrims suffered and how they celebrated the ending of it with a harmonizing feast, the deeper realities of colonization have had a lasting impact on Native American communities. To properly reflect on the Thanksgiving holiday each year, it is important to remember both the memories of the 1621 feast, but also a day to mourn the losses of all the Native lives that were lost before and after the centuries that followed. Understanding the true history of Thanksgiving requires empathy and acknowledging both the gratitude and tragedy that occurred in the holiday’s history. Only then will America fully appreciate the depth of the tradition.