Thursday of the last week in
November is Thanksgiving national holiday in the United Sates, as instituted by
President Abraham Lincoln. It has
two-fold meaning. Firstly, it is to
commemorate the safe arrival of the Puritan Pilgrims to their newly found
religious freedom in North America but also being saved from starvation by
compassionate Wampanoag tribe Native Americans upon arrival. Secondly, it is to
heal the postbellum division of the nation by reminding all Americans how
grateful it is to live in the land of freedom – the kind of freedom that the
Puritan Pilgrims came all the way to find in this land.
The Puritan Pilgrims escaped
from the religious persecution in England and found their freedom in North
America. When they arrived, they were
starving and on the verge of death. Because they came to the Wampanoag nation without
“visa”, they could have been persecuted by Wampanoag tribes, who deemed them as
“invaders”. However, the tribes in Plymouth saw these strange starving
newcomers with compassion and invited them to their annual harvest festival.
Thus, not only the pilgrims did not experience another persecution but also
were spared from starvation, thanks to the tribe’s tolerance and compassion to
strangers.
When President Lincoln instituted
Thanksgiving as a national holiday, the United States was suffering from a
sharp division between the Union states and the Confederate states, as they
were in the Civil War. Though the Union states’ victory and preventing the
secession of the Confederate states, the nation was still suffering from the
division and needed to heal for true unity. Lincoln must have thought that
evoking people’s sense of gratitude for living in the land of freedom and
bounty would bring the divided people together.
The prototype of the American
Thanksgiving celebration is found in Native American’s annual harvest festivals,
including the one celebrated by the Wampanoag tribe in the New England. For centuries, indigenous people expressed
their gratitude to Mother Nature for her bounty through their harvest
festivals. In this thanksgiving festival for harvest, there is a sense of unity
not among people in the community but also with the Mother Nature through her
bounties they harvested. When the starving Puritan Pilgrims came all the way
from England, Wampanoag tribes invited these strangers into their thanksgiving
communion, so that they would not die from hunger. Furthermore, they taught the
new comers from England how to grow crops in their newfound freedom, as they
had been doing for centuries.
For the Puritan pilgrims, being
allowed to join in the Wampanoag harvest thanksgiving festival marked the end
of their long ordeals – religious persecution and dangerous journey of crossing
the Atlantic Ocean with scarce food. Though starving and exhausted after a long
dangerous journey, they made it to America, where they were not only free from
persecution but also from starvation, as the Native American hosts shared their
thanksgiving bounty and taught how to grow crops, rather than rejecting from
their communion. Certainly, the Puritan Pilgrims were saved by the Wampanoag
hosts’ kindness and compassion, and the harvest thanksgiving festival in 1620
was also to mark harmonious unity between the Native American hosts and the
Puritan Pilgrim new comers. It was also to be the unity that symbolizes the
pluralistic unity of the United States, also the unity of the nation that
President Lincoln preserved and wanted to celebrate by making Thanksgiving a
national holiday.
Unfortunately, the harmonious
unity between the Wampanoag hosts and the Puritan Pilgrims newcomers was
short-lived. As more Puritans and other
European Christians arrived, they began to rob the Native Americans across the
land. Those who were kind and
compassionate to save the new comers were no longer appreciated but to be
deprived by those who were saved, benefited and supposed to be grateful. The
unity between the compassionate Native American givers and the humble Puritan
Pilgrims recipients turned into a widening and deepening division, as the
recipients lost their sense of gratitude to their greed. This division has not
been healed even after nearly 400 years, even though Thanksgiving has been a
national holiday to heal the division wound of the Civil War about 160 years
ago by recalling the harmonious unity that the Native American hosts and the
Puritan Pilgrims new comers once enjoyed by sharing Thanksgiving.
Today, the way Thanksgiving
holiday is celebrated in the United States seems to have forgotten its original
spirit of unity through gratitude, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion,
ideology, and so forth. It is because materialism, hypocrisy and narcissism
have hijacked this holiday, replicating how the offspring of the Puritan
Pilgrims let their greed rob the generous Wampanoag hots.
Thanksgiving holiday has
turned into a day of gluttony in the United States, where about 40% edible
foods go straight to garbage landfill. It rater symbolizes how much Americans
grab and waste. To verify this, you can look into garbage dumpsters in your
neighborhood alleys or even your own garbage bin, and see how much still-edible
foods are thrown in, after Thanksgiving holiday. If you worry about gaining
weights from Thanksgiving dinner and feel like signing up for a gym membership,
you must be so far from the original spirit of Thanksgiving, as you are trying
to waste your money on top of the food you have already wasted by consuming
more than what you really needed.
If we truly observe the
spirit of Thanksgiving, which is gratitude, as the Native Americans celebrated,
then, not only we make less waste but also we can celebrate pluralistic unity.
