Thanksgiving? No Thanks

Family, friends and acquaintances convene every year on the fourth Thursday in November dressed in their Sunday best. They gather around a dining table–or the living room television–to commit the cardinal sin of gluttony while watching football or a televised parade. They prepare and indulge in an elaborate feast, all while sipping on wine and beer, bantering about this year's football season, bickering about politics and intruding in personal matters like your cousin's dalliances and your brother's weight gain. Thanksgiving, almost single-handedly, kicks off a nearly two-month period of utter commercialism, consumerism and blatant debauchery normalized by the vast participation of all of us and mere tradition.

It is a big, fat, round joke–a charade of our shared cognitive dissonance as the American people.

I urge that the forthcoming doesn't suffer from misinterpretation. I am all up for family gatherings centered around lavish dishes and copious amounts of alcohol. But the bare nature of Thanksgiving doesn't merit the amount of attention and effort the holiday receives. Largely and solely through tradition and custom, people partake in the holiday, not giving much thought as to why the United States even celebrates Thanksgiving in the first place.

And while traditions are a source of comfort and familial reinforcement, the truth and facts regarding Thanksgiving and its outright lies become as amalgamated as the food on the dinner plate. It is a muddled mess.

Like most of us, I, too, grew up celebrating the holiday. I believed the many books, stories and television specials that romanticized Thanksgiving. I colored pictures of gobbling turkeys, cornucopias and harmonious depictions of an amicably shared feast between the pilgrims and the so-called Indians. I even participated the Thanksgiving parade as part of my high school's band.

Embarrassingly, it wasn't until college that I learned that the term 'Indians' is a misnomer for Native Americans and indigenous people. Through more thorough and transparent education, I came to learn that most of what we understand to be the history of Thanksgiving is a fabrication, an extensive false narrative, and the efforts of various industries to capitalize on our gullibility. It is all one big slice of deception forced down our throats.

The digestible snapshot of what we permit as the history of Thanksgiving largely, if not entirely, omits the atrocities and injustices of colonization. Europeans did not ethically settle their presence in the Americas. They unfolded one of the largest genocides and population displacement in history, all while unjustly stealing indigenous communities of their land. Within the context of the time, land theft did not only mean that these indigenous communities were left without physical land, it meant they were stripped of their food security, ultimately leading to famine. It disrupted their socioeconomic system. It weaponized their source of food, resulting in submission to colonialism.

In its entirety, the complicated history of Thanksgiving, one that truly centers the experiences of indigenous communities at the hands of colonizers, is riddled with ethno-racial injustices, many of which have permeated throughout history and have had long-term detrimental outcomes. We are spoon-fed this white-washed tale which omits actuality. Public school textbooks would have us believing something entirely different; a very bland and dry cut from this nation's historical composition. But, after some research, one can find these false tales to be garnishes to a very disturbing meal. If one takes a closer look at the artifacts and documents left behind by indigenous tribes and the Europeans, we'll find that much of what we've accepted as truth isn't true at all. While the Mayflower did indeed bring the Pilgrims to North America in 1620 and did celebrate a successful harvest in 1621, there are other similar events dating back to 1598, 23 years before the arrival of Europeans, specifically English people, to Plymouth Rock. That year, Juan De Oñate, a Spanish colonist, arrived to the Paso Del Norte region, known now as El Paso County. But because America's history isn't necessarily intertwined with or reflective of Spanish colonization, at least not through the textbook context of Thanksgiving, Americana prefers to provide us with an English, white-washed version.

Either way, on both occasions, with these foreigners coming to the Americas, an unbelievable amount of indigenous people were murdered, raped, enslaved and diseased. The arrival of both De Oñate and the Pilgrims almost obliterated already established cultures, both physically and metaphysically, to replace it with a Puritan creed, European ideologies and Christianity. There are other accounts claiming to be the real first Thanksgiving, conflicting with what we've been taught in school. While most of these accounts might be historically accurate, they only attest to the increasing fickleness of Thanksgiving Day as depicted by public education.

While it's humbling to think that these two different nationalities and cultural demographics harmoniously came together to share a meal, it simply isn't true, to some extent. Yes, there was an exchange of food, but in exchange for what? Native American land, of course. In actuality, all of the many Thanksgivings represent the conniving nature of human beings. It wasn't a joyous meeting of the two demographics; it was an invasion of one settled land.

Still have a hunger for all things Thanksgiving? Okay.

To satisfy that hunger, Americans turn to turkey. Yes, Thanksgiving dinner would not be the same without the delectable, hefty bird situated on top of a luminous silver tray. It is the star of the night. Everyone is in awe of its roasted, glistening skin adorned in spices and herbs and it's muscular girth. But like all unmatched beauty, it is more than likely false. To please America's growing obsession with false beauty, many of today's turkeys are highly genetically modified. While this may come as no surprise, it remains surprising that many people are apathetic toward this fallacy. Since the 1900s, American turkeys have nearly tripled in size since the 1900s.

Genetically modifying turkeys have caused them to become obese, unable to walk or balance themselves properly, and even causing them to be unable to reproduce on their own. For this reason, most of the turkeys raised in U.S., which is in the millions, come from artificial insemination.

The serving of turkey on Thanksgiving Day also has its double standards. Customarily, people share what they're most thankful for with everyone else sitting at the table. Also customarily, the people most often left unthanked are the immigrants working in the agricultural industry. They are the most deserving of appreciation for getting the turkey from the farm to the table. With today's political and social zeitgeist, coupled with the detrimental economic impact and health hazards brought forth by the coronavirus pandemic, it is especially bothersome that a growing call for removal of all undocumented immigrants exists while the population allows for certain industries to benefit from extorting their labor.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that roughly half of the country's farming workforce is undocumented while 57 percent of those who ultimately obtain proper documentation come from Mexico. Furthermore, the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy reported that the industry in the United States which most depends on an undocumented workforce is agriculture. In our current social landscape, ostracizing the lived experiences and voices of immigrant communities may be a common practice, but they are instrumental to the very nature of Thanksgiving.

And if that isn't enough to ruin your Thanksgiving appetite, perhaps the horrors of Black Friday, now synonymous with Thanksgiving festivities, will. Black Friday turns the Thanksgiving beast on its back and feeds from its turkey breasts. From being thankful for what we have to insatiable consumerism, shoppers have opted for deals and price cuts over quality family time, and large corporations and companies aren't entirely to blame. MiQ recently reported that 69 percent of consumers have stated they plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day, whether at physical stores or online.

If Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be about family and family values, then why isn't that entirely mirrored during the celebration? Lies, deception, over consumption and selfishness. I'm not sure about you, but I don't relate any of them with the importance of family.

I'm not a complete Thanksgiving killjoy. I do appreciate the time-off corporations, companies and businesses provide their employees for some family time. The nation's economy indubitably benefits from the traveling and its associated costs as well as from the purchasing of abundant food, more so in an enduring pandemic. Overall, I appreciate the kindness and warm-heartedness people often undertake beginning on Thanksgiving and throughout the holidays. But, if we are to celebrate Thanksgiving, it's good to know the truth from the false and the good from the bad. At least a comprehensive understanding of Thanksgiving can be something we can all be thankful for.