Forums » Smalltalk » An explaination of Thanksgiving

I feel like doing something important, and instead of cleaning, I've decided to write this thing. Yay...mental challenges instead of physical ones! Typical me.

Anywho. So, Thanksgiving.

What is this weird holiday that Americans celebrate right before Christmas, which seems crazy, because Christmas is already the biggest American holiday of the year? But we're like, "We're gonna have another holiday, and put it a month before our biggest holiday, so we can max out our credit cards!" Lol.

It seems weird, I know. So here's what Thanksgiving seems to be about from my point of view.

(Granted, there are different points of view. Some people really have a philosophical objection to celebrating Thanksgiving. But here's what it means to me.)

While Christmas is mainly about a significant religious event and showing religious devotion, along with being a LOT about gift-giving and fun myths (like the myths of Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman), Thanksgiving is more secular.

Christmas is also about celebrating the magic of winter, and showing care for people by surprising them with gifts you know they want that you sneakily bought for them while they weren't looking.

And it's very much about making kids happy. (Once you reach adulthood it's honestly a lot of work. Lol.)

Christmas is the bright, colorful holiday -- full of strings of lights, of reds and greens and silvers -- full of music, and joy, and the sound of bells in the air. The adjective that I'd use to describe Christmas would be joyful. A lot of the songs have the word "joy" in them.

And let's not forget all the Celtic traditions that made their way into Christmas, like the Christmas tree, and it's colorful balls, and the wreaths.

Although it might seem repetitive, Thanksgiving has a whole different feel. It's more about the big dinner, and instead of bright colors, it's hallmark is the Fall colors: brown and orange. It's not about gift-giving, it's all about the big, intricately-prepared meal you have with family and/or close friends. It's basically a harvest festival.

The getting-together-to-have-a-huge-meal part is so integral to the meaning of Thanksgiving that many people have been known to go to two or three different meals in the same day, so as not to offend this or that side of the family. Or, some people do multiple Thanksgiving dinners on different days to accommodate all the social demands of the holiday. Like I said, it's all about the dinner. And also, instead of a theme of joy, the theme of Thanksgiving is gratitude. The spirit of it is supposed to be, "I am thankful that I have this food, I am thankful for my family, etc." Back to the harvest festival concept. Some folks go around the table and say what they're thankful for.

Now--in reality, it can sometimes be more about keeping that crazy uncle from saying anything embarrassing, avoiding the subject of politics, and watching a football game that has become part of the modern tradition, but traditionally, it's, in theory, supposed to be about giving thanks and togetherness and such.

Now, the history. The history is convoluted and controversial. In 1621, a group of English protestant seperatists who had fled England to live in the Netherlands, and then eventually sailed to America, had their first successful harvest in what is now the state of Massachusetts. (I know, right? They went to the Netherlands first. They didn't mention that in history class, did they?)

The thing is, they might not have made it through that first winter if it had not been for the Native Americans helping them out. At this first feast to celebrate the harvest, there were only 53 Europeans left alive (about half of the original group that had sailed for America), and 90 Native Americans.

This colony was only the second successful European colony in the Americas, and things were still peaceful. Many years later, after the war with Britain was won, George Washington created a national holiday to commemorate this "first Thanksgiving" in 1621--a moment of mutual assistance and peace and prosperity between the settlers and the Native Americans.

This has a sad irony to it, of course, because of what happened later. Ferocious conflict between the decendents of the original European settlers to America and the native peoples and many broken treaties and acts of hostility, especially in the 1820s and 1830s during Andrew Jackson's administration. 1831 was the infamous and tragic Trail of Tears in which the Cherokee Nation was taken captive by the U.S. army and forcibly relocated. This is why some people don't celebrate Thanksgiving.

Interestingly, the second president, Thomas Jefferson, didn't celebrate the holiday, and it died out for a long time. So, there was no national holiday called Thanksgiving that celebrated peace, cooperation, and prosperity during the 1830s. Or in the 1840s. Or in the 1850s.

Then--the Civil War. In the 1860s, the Northern half of the country and the Southern half of the country were at eachothers' throats; many people had sons or husbands who had died in battle, were away in battle, or had come back from battle maimed and disabled.

The president of the United States at the time, Abraham Lincoln, reinstated this holiday specifically centered around giving thanks for what we have. The country probably needed something like that at the time to raise morale.

And it stuck. Thanksgiving has been a national holiday in the United States ever since. When president Franklin D Roosevelt tried to change the date of Thanksgiving in 1939 to bolster retail sales during an economic depression, there was a national outcry against it. It had become a semi-sacred tradition. And, you don't want to change something that Abraham Lincoln did, because that's not going to go over well. Congress actually made a law putting it back to the fourth Thursday in November, in response to that.

So, as you can see, this uniquely American holiday has a complicated history, and means different things to different people. For me, it's still about getting together and giving thanks for what we have.

This has been "explaining why Americans have a bizarre extra holiday where people put up pictures of hats with buckles on them and eat poultry," or, "A Night With Gail Regurgitating Interesting Facts She Read on Wikipedia."

Thank you very much!

*bows*

(*cane pulls me offstage*)

Thanksgiving is really an interesting Holiday. I've heard some Europeans liken it to harvest festivals and things like Octoberfest. That's the kind of feeling involved since Thanksgiving also has a history with the harvest season. Still, what really sets it apart is the lack of gift-giving. I can't think of another American holiday that involves no gifts off-hand. It also lacks the romantic charm that Christmas has, probably second only to Valentine's day. Thanksgiving well and truly is most about family, not children, or gifts, or lovers, etc.

Thanksgiving is actually a super important holiday for my family as that's the time when most of the family gets together for lots of good food, laughs, board/card games, talking and just spending time together. For us Thanksgiving is actually a bit of a potluck as since we usually have 20+ at our Thanksgiving dinner tables, it kinda helps to have people pitch in with most of the side dishes and desserts. We will have 5 people in the kitchen all cooking at once with both of our ovens going constantly. Then after the giant meal, comes some relaxing, talking and lots of card and board games. It's a rowdy and super fun affair that lasts well into the night and several people even stay a few nights so the fun continues into the weekend! Between our large kitchen and the fact that we have space to accommodate the overnighters is why my family hosts Thanksgiving every year as we are the best suited for it.

Our Christmas for however is a much quieter time with just the immediate family only. So yeah, over here, Christmas is actually overshadowed by Thanksgiving instead of the other way around.

Eh Easter is more half and half as it is quite common for people to give out chocolate and stuffed animals on that day. Then there are Easter baskets for the kids.

Wait... Are you saying Santa Claus is a myth?! O.O

Hehe... Happy Thanksgiving America! 💕💗

American Thanksgiving definitely has a rough history. I don't really celebrate it because of the dark history behind it. It seems wrong for me as mostly white person to celebrate something that many Native Americans find painful. Even if most of my family only immigrated here in the early1900s; my great grandma was heavily Native American.

I still spend time with my dad as he has a day off work but every Thanksgiving I try to put up candles for lost lives and take time for self reflection.

I do think it's fine if people still get together and are thankful for things on Thanksgiving as long as they aren't ignorant to the holidays past and take time for self reflection on prejudice.

i’ve never understood why y’all americans celebrate thanksgiving so thank you for making this; i really wanted to know more about it!
especially because i - as a scandinavian - don’t celebrate thanksgiving but we’ve adopted the black friday “part” of what comes after. i don’t think it’s common culture here anymore but i’m fairly sure that there were some kind of gathering in old times to celebrate the harvest here, too! ^^

Thanks for y'all's replies. I have one correction to add to my post: It turns out the 1621 feast wasn't connected with the Thanksgiving holiday until the Progressive Era (1890s), so the FIRST time it was made a holiday, it really was just about giving thanks.

That's true...at Christmas we also have a big meal. The Thanksgiving meal has a lot of traditional foods, though, that are specifically native to North America. For example, turkey, and corn, and pumpkin. It's almost like there are rules for Thanksgiving dinner that don't apply to Christmas dinner. Lol. You almost have to have turkey at Thanksgiving, if you're a meat-eater. If someone served chicken instead, everyone at the table would be like, "What's wrong with you? It's Thanksgiving!" And there are passionate arguments over whether the meal should have jellied cranberry sauce or regular cranberry sauce with whole cranberries in it. Lol. (I vote for the jellied cranberry sauce.) Most people have memories from childhood, and if certain foods aren't there, they might feel like it's not a "real" Thanksgiving dinner. So that's the food thing.

And boy...some older women are protective of their recipes for stuffing! Beware.

It's fun.

LOL

We usually have chicken and dumplings xD

My (immediate) family aren’t big turkey fans

Hahahaha. Well then. I stand corrected! You can have chicken at Thanksgiving after all.