Far from what is now common lore of mutual celebration between pilgrims and Native Americans, Thanksgiving did not start off with such rosy origins. It is a day that has been remapped and cemented over time as a hallmark of American culture.
American history perpetuates that original European inhabitants of the New World sought to share their culture and customs with the Native Americans on a feast day in which thoughts of conquest and dominion were put aside. The single biggest hallmark of Thanksgiving, however, is the belief in a common fiction. The story goes that pilgrims and nameless Indians sat down together to break bread.
However, this was curated in the mid-1800s to provide a level of romanticization and distant nostalgia around what was quickly becoming a national holiday. Perpetuating this narrative forgets the bloodshed, trauma and lasting cultural diminishment of the Native American population in the United States.
This is a history that Americans should remember before filling a second plate with turkey and mash or falling asleep with a football game playing. It is a legacy that America must live with and bear wholeheartedly. Across 250 years of American history, the holiday of Thanksgiving has been reinvented many times and taken on many different faces.
In 2023, it was the country’s most popular day for shopping at any point in the year, with 76.2 million shoppers visiting in-store locations and 90.6 million consumers shopping online. The addition of Cyber Monday at the dawn of the 21st Century has only sought to feed into corporate capitalism that the holiday is now steeped in.
What was in the 19th Century a rowdy, communal affair is now primarily family-oriented and docile. However, just as the country does with so many other aspects of its history, it has tactically chosen which traditions to hold onto and which to throw away. The invention of Black Friday’, a day of national sales for consumer goods the day after the holiday, is one of the biggest testaments to its inherent commercialisation during the 20th Century.
The irony in this is, of course, that in the era of Abraham Lincoln, as the first President to declare the day a national holiday, it was meant to be a time of inward reflection on the immaterial treasures within the home rather than an outward need to stock up on material goods. Therefore, in just over a century, the entire meaning of the holiday has lost its way.
This then begs the question: What will the holiday look like in future? In a world where seemingly everything is now tailored to the preferences of the individual, it does not look like the Thanksgiving celebration will be an exception. This “new frontier” would only mark an increasing detachment from the holidays communal and understated conception to a flashy display of individual desire and corporatism.
Sacrificing the human elements of the holiday risks removing its original design as a holiday set about bringing people together. It may be that the holiday will continue to morph as tastes change, as it has done up to know. If we are to get the best from the holiday in future though two things are abundantly clear.
The first is that the nation must choose to reject its revised version of history and present in its place the true facts about the original European settlers’ interactions with Native Americans. The second is that the country must also question the central tenet of the holiday now being a day of commercialization, in every sense of the word.
Although the holiday has a marred past, there is no need to make the future of Thanksgiving solely about these attributes. As an idea that is so versatile, Americans should seek to appreciate that it is a time that means something different to each and every individual. It should therefore be a time for a coming together of a variety of different cultural customs and ideals rather than a tokenistic extension of blanket “American” values.
The “home and hearth” concept of Thanksgiving is still locked within these broader additions. Bringing it out will just require, as most things do, an active effort. If there is one thing people could be grateful for in future iterations of the holiday, it is that they at least tried to make a change.