Thanksgiving?

Did you get yourself all full of turkey this week? While you absorb the last of the cranberry relish and reach for the last piece of pecan pie, here’s something else to digest.

These are the last days of Thanksgiving. Not because we’re headed for a depression, in fact, bad times always give us more to be thankful for. No, this has its roots in political correctness and we’re losing our minds.

We all know some history about Thanksgiving, pilgrims and Indians making popcorn and so forth. There are several accounts and basically they all agree the settlers and natives had a three day feast in the fall of 1621.

Over time stories have been added to the lore of Thanksgiving. Enter pumpkin pie, a day off of work, and black Friday the kick off to Christmas shopping season. We have nothing in common with pilgrims, their belt-buckle shoes for starters, but that’s beside the point. The early settlers had survival skills that would laugh at todays most hardened Marine, and a faith that would put us to shame. To live another year was truly something to be thankful for. Whatever your feelings for the pilgrims, you must stand in awe of their accomplishments
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From what I’ve read the natives got along well with the pilgrims. They helped them hunt and showed them ways to grow crops in the new world. The Indians also had survival skills that were off the charts and played a pivotal role in the pilgrims lasting existence.

So here’s what we know. Indians and pilgrims sat down together and ate dinner sometime around 1621. The dress of the day for pilgrims was long dresses for the women with some type of bonnet over their head. The men wore goofy hats and white pantyhose which went into those famous belt-buckle shoes. Indians wore beads and a feather headdress and that’s about it.

This is where the story takes a turn. Flash foreword this year to a California kindergarten class, yes California. For decades, kids have dressed up in Thanksgiving garb to celebrate the first feast. However this year, little tikes dawning feather headdress and goofy hats were greeted with protest. An angry assembly of sign toting fools marched in front of this elementary school with signs saying, “Don’t celebrate genocide.”

Apparently some parents felt the costumes were demeaning and stereotypical. So how did Indians and pilgrims dress in 1621? Of course the costumes were stereotypical, the kids dressed as Indians and pilgrims! That’s the point! It’s called reenactment. As far as demeaning, I can’t figure that one out. Thanksgiving is about, peace and friendship and of course giving thanks.

However the school board shutdown the 40-year old tradition. Due to the sensitivity of the situation there will be no more cardboard hats, no more dinners to celebrate friendship, and one less lesson of how to share.

I’m not naive enough to know that Indians were brutally killed by the white man. We, as a country, did horrible things to the natives, but sharing a dinner wasn’t one of them. The United States of America did apologize and today tribes receive a stipend for those atrocities. However monetary gains will not change history, that chapter is closed. And if a little boy wants to dress up as a pilgrim let him enjoy the same freedom as the protesters carrying signs. Move on there’s nothing to see here.

Now I’m going to grab another bird leg before some animal rights group claim Thanksgiving is demeaning to turkeys.