Be thankful, not hateful

I am really sick and tired of all the anti-Thankgivings sentiments floating around. People go on and on about how Christopher Columbus invaded the Americas and how Thanksgiving is just a day to celebrate the genocide of the Native Americans.

First off, and listen closely here, Thanksgiving has nothing to do with Christopher Columbus. Columbus did not have Pilgrims with him, but rather he had other sailors and explorers. He was Portugese (though some will tell you he was Italian) and sailed for Spain. When he "discovered" America, he was in the Bahamas, and then explored Cuba and Haiti.

The Pilgrims sailed in 1620, 128 years after Columbus, and landed at Plymouth Rock. Some were from the Netherlands and some were from England. The Pilgrims met the Wampanoag people, Native Americans living in what is now known as New England. The Wampanoag were essential to the Pilgrims survival the first winter, and not because the Pilgrims took advantage of them. It is this coming together that we celebrate. Some misinterpret Thanksgiving as a religious holiday because the Pilgrims were Christian people seeking religious freedom, but since this is a celebration of a coming together of diverse groups and the Wampanoag weren't Christian, I don't believe it is a religious holiday.

In fact, back when The United States was first becomming a country, Thomas Jefferson said that Christmas and Easter should not be national holidays because, First Ammendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". Since both Christmas and Easter are clearly Christian holidays and national holidays are made holidays by becomming law, doesn't making them holidays make a law respecting an establishment of religion? I think so. However, Jeffereson did believe Thanksgiving should be a national holiday because it was not a holiday that respected an establishment of a specific religion. On Thanksgiving Day, many folks do give thanks to their respective God, but Thanksgiving is simply a day to "give thanks", so Atheists and Agnostic folk are more than welcome to celebrate.

Now the naysayers are still thinking, "What about the subsequent pillaging and plundering of the Native Americans?" Are the Pilgrims directly responsible for that? I don't think so. In fact, there was much wrong doing going on before the Pilgrims ever got to Plymouth, but not everyone was in on it. In 1605, English captain George Weymouth took five natives with him back to England. In 1614, John Smith made his map of New England. When he left, Captain Thomas Hunt stayed behind and took twenty-four Native Americans back to Spain to sell as slaves. When he got there, he sold a few before he was caught by Spanish friars who took custody of them because they knew this was wrong. And subsequently some of them were returned to their homeland in New England. It wasn't until 1674, fifty-four years after the intial Pilgrims arrived, that problems began to arise between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims. If you know anything about life expectancy back then, there probably weren't many of the original Pilgrims remaining. And while it is true that there have been many injustices commited against the Native Americans, Thanksgiving should be about where we as a human race went right and not where we went wrong.