Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. This is because no matter what religion you are, or even if you are not religious at all, no matter what country you or your ancestors originate from, no matter what language you speak: if you are in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November you are almost certainly celebrating Thanksgiving.
Its roots are traced to a (apocryphal?) harvest feast put together jointly by dissident Christian European settlers of what is now called the USA, who’d been here barely a year, and Nature-worshipping indigenous inhabitants who are now called Native Americans.
Thanksgiving feasts starting with the first have all had their emphasis on gratitude, hospitality, and strength in diversity. Thanksgiving exemplifies the United States, a country that I view as the greatest, most audacious experiment in human history. Namely: can we build a culture that is not based any one ethnicity, or any one group’s belief system, but is instead based on freedom, acceptance, fairness, mutual assistance, and mutual respect?
From the very first Thanksgiving and on into our collective future, this great cultural experiment continues to unfold.
I give thanks that I am fortunate enough to be part of it.
— Creon Levit (2001)
Here is a very interesting post about the (actual) History of Thanksgiving.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-27-2024
The Indians weredying in large numbers from a new plague smallpox, and the Europeans were eating the food thathad been saved for the now departed, after all you cant take it with you. Please read "The Florida of the Inca" (varner translation of Vega, perhaps the first book written about America in the depth that it was. It tells a very compelling bunch of stories) Yes I agree with you about Thanks giving very important to share with one another and aply the Golden Rule in new and unknown situations, on principle. Not what the Castillians did here. The British did better. But not good enough, although they eventually replaced slavery by race with indentured servitude mostly of poor Indians like the family of a future Nobel Laureate for the English language V.S.Naipaul. We urgently NEED to abolish slavery altogether its too big a temptation that will be used if we don't. Soon.