Thanksgiving is the holiday everyone knows, but doesn’t love. Sure, you can vouch for it and say “Oh heck yeah, I love turkey!”  But once you remember the arguments at the dinner table, the mismatched political views, that one relative that gets hurt that no one ate their store-bought pumpkin pie, and ending the evening with full hearts and diarrhea.  However, this is absolutely nothing compared to the horrors of the origin of the holiday. 

It all started one fateful day when the Puritans parked their ship at an infamous rock, getting down to explore a new land and build a new society. The only problem was that there were already settlers there, and in fact they had been there for centuries. 

The Wampanoag people were unknown to the Puritans, however the Wampanoag had been watching from the shadows. They had been watching the Puritans closely, they had a situation just like this a few years ago with the Vikings, and they were judging to see if they could make peace with the Puritans, and possibly a treaty. 

Meanwhile, the Puritans were totally struggling, the ship with their supplies hadn’t arrived, and most of their population was dying of starvation, so they had to eat all the scraps they could find. But one day, their troubles would come to an end, while they were at rock bottom, the Wampanoag would show up at their doorstep. The Puritans were confused, and both sides were suspicious of the other. But eventually, both leaders sat down to make a truce. The Wampanoag would agree to help the Puritans that winter as long as they protected them from a rival tribe nearby. 

The Wampanoag sent an english-speaking man to help the Puritans. He told them how to harvest, and use fish as fertilizer. So, with the help of the Wampanoag they ended the spring with a bountiful harvest. That harvest is what you call Thanksgiving, or the First Thanksgiving, and it originally went on for three days. From then on, their alliance lasted half a century. However, things wouldn’t always go this smoothly.

As time went on, more settlers began arriving, and the more settlers arrived the more land they needed. So of course they decided to kick out the Wampanoag from their own land that they had lived on for centuries, and of course the Wampanoag didn’t like that. This sparked tension between the two, and eventually a battle broke out between the Puritans and the Wampanoag. There goes that treaty. Funny thing is, the second Thanksgiving was celebrated after a long and rough battle with the Wampanoag, but instead of celebrating with the Wampanoag, they celebrated the soldiers who came back alive. When the men came back from battle holding dead Wampanoag bodies in hand, the governor decided to hold a feast to congratulate the death of the Wampanoag.

Then, Abraham Linclon decided to make this a national holiday to “bring people together” and “unite the nation” during the Civil War. Funny how he took out the part about deporting people out of their homes and slaughtering civilizations. 

Thanksgiving is a holiday to be grateful for what you have, spend time with family, and eat turkey, but it’s important to remember its horrific origins.