Thanksgiving National Holiday – Not a Day of Gluttony but a Day of Redeeming the Spirit of Unity through Gratitude

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.