Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It’s a holiday traditionally dominated by the 3 F’s: Family, Food and Football. But in recent years, it’s become more of an afterthought.
Indeed, many people seem to view Thanksgiving as the day to beat the holiday shopping rush. Others simply use the holiday to fuel up for the next morning’s mall mayhem.
It gets worse. If you’ve been looking at store decorations and ads lately, you’ve surely noticed the holiday season began on November 1st. While I love the holidays as much as anyone, hearing Let It Snow and Jingle Bells while the leaves are still on the trees in the South just feels wrong. Seeing one of our nation’s most significant holidays get swept under the rug because of this leaves me just as uneasy.
It seems we’ve conveniently forgotten the purpose of Thanksgiving. While we deserve credit for using the holiday season to brighten spirits and be good to one another, we shouldn’t bypass a day designated for us to show gratitude. After all, Thanksgiving not only predates our nation, but it’s also pivotal in terms of us having a nation.
The first Thanksgiving was put on by the Puritans in present-day Massachusetts, as show of gratitude towards the native population. When these settlers arrived from England, they were unprepared for the region’s cold winters and didn’t know how to farm efficiently. Although the natives in the area were apprehensive of having a strange group of people in their area, they helped the Puritans survive — which is what inspired the now-traditional feast.
The world has changed a lot since that time. British colonies eventually sprung up across the east coast, followed by the independence of our nation and the expansion of that nation across the continent. All of this likely wouldn’t have happened if the native population hadn’t helped a freezing and famished group of settlers survive, and if those settlers hadn’t expressed their gratitude with a communal feast.
It’s important to remember that, even as we’ve done our best to forget. Today across Oklahoma, there are plenty of reservations and casinos, along with bars that sell watered down beer by law. None of that is a coincidence. As a nation, have not been kind to those who were so gracious to our forefathers, those who deserve better than to have been exploited, relocated and forgotten.
It’s time to bring back that spirit we’ve long forgotten. It’s time to show gratitude for what we have and for those we have around us. It’s time to display the values we stand for as a nation, and show what makes our culture so great.
It’s time to Be Thankful.