Don't Spread Myths During Thanksgiving
A historian's perspective
White people love to engage in fairytales during thanksgiving. They have a nice mythology, involving Turkeys and pilgrims. The mythology begins by " Sometime in the 1600, Pilgrims who came on a boat from England met with the Indians. The Indians taught pilgrims about food that grows in America. They sat together and had a feast, and that's why we celebrate thanksgiving.
NONE OF THIS HAPPENED.
There is an easy option if you don’t want to get into gruesome genocide
Instead of reinforcing this dangerous myth, tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
If we are being historically accurate, we would say, "during the civil war, Abraham Lincoln noticed the troop morale was low. Lucky for him, the North had some victories under their belt, so he offered the First Proclamation Of Thanksgiving.
The advantage of using this approach:
It is truthful
If you have very young children, you don't have to expose them to the true horrors of genocide and settler-colonialism.
You stop perpetuating the strange thanksgiving myth.
Meanwhile, if you do want to get into the gory genocidal details, listen to our episode about the Pequot Wars