The Celebration and Controversy of Thanksgiving In numerous American families, the Thanksgiving celebration has misplaced its original religious meaning; instead, it now focuses on cooking and sharing a generous meal with friends and family. Thanksgiving staple, turkey, is so ubiquitous that it has become everything but synonymous with the holiday, might or might not had been on offer when the Pilgrims hosted the inaugural feast in 1621. However according to the National Turkey Federation, today majority of Americans eat turkey—whether deep fried, roasted or baked, on Thanksgiving day. Other traditional meals include cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Volunteering happens to be a common Thanksgiving Day activity, and communities often give away free dinners for the poor. In addition, parades have also become a core part of Thanksgiving Day in towns and cities across the U.S. Organized by Macy’s department store since 1924, Thanksgiving Day parade of New York is the most famous and largest, calling out around 2 to 3 million audiences with its 2.5-mile route and drawing a huge television audience. It features marching performers, bands, elaborate floats conveying different celebrities and huge balloons shaped like cartoon characters. While most of the people associate Thanksgiving Day with merry and joy, there is a certain faction that raises controversy with it. Some scholars believe that it is not confirmed if feast at Plymouth actually constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States. Certainly, historians have documented other rituals of thanks among European settlers in North America that precede the Pilgrims’ celebration. For instance, in 1565, the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé requested members of the local Timucua tribe to a dinner in St. Augustine, Florida, after holding a mass to thank God for his crew’s safe arrival. On December 4, 1619, when 38 British colonizers reached a place known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River, they recite an announcement labelling the date as “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” Some Native Americans and others raise objection on how Thanksgiving story is narrated to the Americans, especially to school children. In their opinion, the traditional story depicts a
rather deceptive merry portrait of relations between the Wampanoag people and Pilgrims, veiling the long bloody conflict history between European settlers and Native Americans which resulted in the deaths of millions. Since 1970, protesters gather on the day of Thanksgiving at the top of Cole’s Hill that oversees Plymouth Rock, to memorialize a “National Day of Mourning.” Similar events are held in other parts of the country. www.researchomatic.com/Thanksgiving-4568.html