I still remembered last Thanksgiving I was asking my friend who was in Australia do they celebrate
Thanksgiving or not, but then I realized right away it's probably be a dumb question because everyone
knows only American Celebrate Thanksgiving right?
Or, maybe, I was being dumb by thinking only Americans celebrate it.
So the question here is, who celebrate thanksgiving, and are we even supposed to celebrate it in
the first place?
Let’s find out, with people also Ask.
Hi, I am Shao, welcome to what people also ask, where I search something seemingly obvious
and share with you some of those PAA, aka People also ask , which is a feature
telling you what people also ask on Google that related to your query.
So today’s keyword is Thanksgiving.
So the first PAA is: Who had the first Thanksgiving, Canadian or the American?
The answer is extracted by an article titled “This is why Canada has a different Thanksgiving
than the US” published by Insider Inc., previously called Business Insider Inc., which
is an American online media company focused on business and financial news.
And guess what Americans, according to this article, Canadian might start celebrating
Thanksgiving before you do.
Canadian Thanksgiving takes place on the second Monday in October, while the US celebrates
on the fourth Thursday of November.
The earliest recorded Canadian Thanksgiving actually dates back to 1578 — well before
the Pilgrims and the Native Americans feasted at Plymouth in 1621.
This article also talked about a lot of differences between the US version and the Canadian version
of Thanksgiving.
If you are interested in this article, I put the link in the description
All right, so now we know Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving, but how about Europeans?
The next PAA “Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe?”
extracted from an article titled “Erntedank: Thanksgiving in Germany” suggests that at
least a small portion of people in some german-speaking countries do.
However, it is more religious than the US version of Thanksgiving.
Here’s are some excerpt from this article:
The typical German, Austrian or Swiss thanksgiving celebration (Erntedankfest) is usually a rural
harvest time observance with church services, a parade, music, and a country fair atmosphere.
European thanksgiving observance is not anything like the more secular traditional family holiday
and feast in Canada and the United States.
Unless they live in a rural area or are church-goers, most Germans have only experienced Erntedankfest
by seeing it on the television.
This article is published by The German Way and More, which is a website providing content
focused on German culture and life in Germany.
I encourage you to check out this website if you are interested in German culture.
Well, so what other countries also celebrate Thanksgiving you ask?
An article titled “5 countries besides America where people celebrate Thanksgiving
“, answering our next PAA “What countries celebrate Thanksgiving?”
There are 5 countries or regions do celebrate Thanksgiving other than America, those countries
and regions are :
Canada, as we have mentioned.
Liberia
Leiden City in Netherland,
Grenada,
And, The Australian territory of Norfolk Island.
So we have covered a little bit about who celebrate thanksgiving, I think it's a good time
to talk about if are we even supposed to“celebrate” it in the first place?
So the next PAA is “Why should we not celebrate Thanksgiving?” the answer to this question
is extracted from one of the Wikipedia entries “National Day of Mourning” which is an
annual protest organized since 1970 by Native Americans of New England on the fourth Thursday
of November, the same day as Thanksgiving.
According to this entry, Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims
and other European settlers.
To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people,
the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their cultures.
What!!!
Isn’t thanksgiving supposed to be a day celebrating the love, friendship, and mutual
gratitude between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims?
According to some historians, it’s probably not the whole story.
I think it’s a good time to talk about another two PAAs that shed some light on the dark side
of Thanksgiving
What did the Pilgrims do to the natives?
And
Did the natives help the pilgrims?
The first PAA is extracted from an article titled “A few things you (probably) don’t
know about Thanksgiving” Published by nationalgeographic.com.
This article provided some details about what actually happened between the Native Americans and
the Pilgrims.
Here is an excerpt extracted from this article:
When the pilgrims arrived in Cape Cod, they were incredibly underprepared.
...and then they showed up six weeks before winter with practically no food.”
which is the perfect time as everyone knows if you ever lived in New England.
In a desperate state, the pilgrims robbed corn from Native Americans and storehouses
soon after they arrived; but because of their overall lack of preparation, half of them
still died within their first year.
Okay, so the pilgrims raided Native Americans, which is definitely not good, but it is nothing
compared to the things they are gonna do later on, which I will talk about it in the next PAA.
So the second article titled “The Vicious Reality Behind the Thanksgiving Myth” published
by The New York Times is written by David J. Silverman, a historian at George Washington
University.
According to this article, the standard story of thanksgiving tells us when the English
Puritans seem destined to become another lost colony, the Natives make contact through the
interpreters Samoset and Squanto . Ousamequin, who was the sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy at that time,
even agreed on a treaty of alliance with them.
Over the spring and summer, the Indians feed the Pilgrims and teach them how to plant corn;
the colony begins to thrive.
However, the author argued that this version of the thanksgiving story sanitizes the power
politics between the Pilgrimand the Wampanoag, and distorts history by highlighting the alliance
while ignoring its deterioration.
Here’s what happened following the feeling good version thanksgiving story according
to professor Silverman:
For years afterward, Ousmequin threatened rivals in and outside the Wampanoag tribe
with violence from his English allies.
And after Ousamequin’s death in 1660, the English and the Wampanoags constantly teetered
on the edge of war because of the colonists’ aggressive, underhanded expansion.
These tensions culminated in King Philip’s War of 1675, in which the English killed
thousands of Native Americans and enslaved thousands more.
Classic Colonists.
If you want to learn more about the relationship between Native Americans and Pilgrims , I recommend
Watching The Natives and the English - Crash Course US History #3 by John Green, I will
put the link in the description.
Alright, let’s recap, today we learned that Canadians might start celebrating Thanksgiving
before Americans do.
There are a lot of countries and regions besides America where people celebrate Thanksgiving.
The standard Thanksgiving story might be sugar-coated and that’s why a lot of Native Americans
do not celebrate it.
So today’s question is, do you think we should stop celebrating Thanksgiving?
Or at least stop associating it with the Native Americans and the Pilgrims.
Let me know your thought.
Bye