The true meaning of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I know it occurred over a week ago, and I should have talked about it earlier than this, but whatever, I’m a busy man. If you’re disgruntled by that, lick my taint. If you remain gruntled however, by all means, read on.

For my non-American readers, Thanksgiving, or as it is more commonly known, Black-Friday’s Eve,  is an annual holiday on the last Thursday of November, where American citizens rest, eat a good meal, and prepare themselves for battle. It is usually a day spent with family or loved-ones, or in quiet contemplation of the slaughter that is to come. We do this because the odds of surviving the following day, Black Friday, a day that poignantly expresses the darkest depths of human depravity, are depressingly low. Black Friday of course is an annual holiday where all crime is legal and the use of class four or lower weaponry is authorized for twenty-four hours. Our government wisely grants us this one day of cathartic release because it allows us to satiate our more bestial urges, and as a beneficial side-effect, reduce the overpopulation problem by killing the poor and other undesirables who cannot afford sufficient security measures.

Like I was saying, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

Okay, so maybe that first explanation isn’t quite the true meaning of Thanksgiving. I still really like the holiday. It isn’t religious, so everyone can enjoy it. It’s always on a Thursday, so lots of people automatically get a four day weekend from work. It doesn’t involve the giving of expensive gifts. It does involve two of America’s favorite national pastimes; excessive gluttony, and sloth. Basically, it’s an entire day devoted solely to eating ungodly amounts of food, drinking a million beers, and falling asleep on the couch watching football. It’s hard to complain about that.

So what is the true meaning of this glorious holiday? Well, that depends on who you ask. There are two distinctly different versions of American Thanksgiving. The first is the Hallmark approved Happy Happy Fun-times version that we’re all taught in school, where the noble Pilgrims came to North America bearing the gift of whiteness, and being the peaceful, tolerant, free-thinking folk that they were, they invited their beloved new neighbors the Wampanoag Indians to come over for a delish feast of candied pig anuses and shaven deer testicles and whatever other horrible foods those olde-fashioned people ate, and everyone held hands, and sang, and talked about all the things they were thankful for, and promised to be best friends for lyfe. The party was such a resounding success, and the peace so unbreakable and lasting, that the Pilgrims and Indians decided to make it an annual tradition, which survives to this day. That’s the official version of Thanksgiving which is taught in schools.

Unfortunately, it’s a lie.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my twenty-nine years of life, it’s that Americans like to ignore inconvenient or uncomfortable truths, and that the capacity of white people for evil actions and subsequent self-delusion is boundless.

Take the Pilgrims for example. We were taught that they were noble and brave pioneers who chose to come to America to create a new society where anybody could be free from religious prosecution. That’s not quite right. The Pilgrims were a subsect of the Puritans, who were a despised, creepy and hateful people. The Pilgrims were even worse. They were such assholes that they tried to overthrow the King and take over England, but they failed so they came to the New World because they had nowhere else to go. Instead of seeking to create a new society of tolerance and freedom from persecution, they decided to create their own little hateful and bigoted utopia of religious extremism and paranoia. They were for all intents and purposes, the white Al-Qaeda.

Here’s how “Thanksgiving” really went down:

Prior to the Pilgrims landing in New England, other whites had already carted off hundreds of the local Native Americans as slaves. Of the few who escaped the slave ships, most died of smallpox, a nice parting gift from the European slavers. By the time the Pilgrims arrived, the local Patuxet Indian population had declined to one man – Squanto. Their meeting went something like this:

“Me Squanto. Me was slave in England. Me know how to speak English good. Me also have Stockholm syndrome. You be Squanto’s friend?”

“Egads! The savage doth speak. Shall I shoot him with mine blunderbuss Elder Mather?”

“Nay Jebediah, stay your hand. Verily this red-skinned subhuman is a gift from God, so that we might further subjugate the native population and set about creating the kingdom of God here in the New World.”

“Wisely spoke Elder. You there! Yes, you in the loincloth. Cover thine sinewy gams, before you givest me a husband bulge in mine pantaloons. Of course you can be our friend! And perhaps you can introduce us to more people like you?”

“Squanto not sure he should do that…Will you be cool?”

“My dearest Squanto, we shalt be totally cool! In fact, let’s throw a party! You invite all your native friends, and they can bring food for us, and we’ll wear our nicest hats with buckles and we can all eat and negotiate a treaty. Doesn’t that sound nice? No genocide at all!”

So Squanto, being a foolish naughty fellow, invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians to come negotiate with the foreign invaders, and they all had a big feast, and the Wampanoags decided that the Pilgrims were a dreary and boring bunch, but there wasn’t many of them so they weren’t much of a threat. During the feast however, Eldest Mather did stand up and give special thanks to God for the devastating Smallpox plague which had wiped out the majority of the Indians already. (true story). The Wampanoags thought that was kind of a rude and weird thing to say, but they let it slide. Little did they know that their new Pilgrim “friends” had already sent the word back to England for their Puritan brethren to come join them in the New World. And come they did. Soon the original Plymouth colony burgeoned with new white meat, and the Indians found themselves continuously pushed off of more of their ancestral lands. The Wampanoags kind of took this lying down, since they didn’t want to think bad things about their new “friends”, even though they kept getting snatched by slavers and killed by smallpox. The Pequot on the other hand knew what was up, and they were all like Kill Whitey, and they went to war with the European invaders. Thanksgiving came about because an army of English and Dutch mercenaries were able to surround and exterminate a village of peaceful Pequot. Since they were so brave and heroic in murdering 700 unarmed men, women, and children, the governor of the Massachusetts bay colony declared a “day of Thanksgiving”. From then on, village after village was attacked, and various sundry atrocities committed against the Native Americans. After each successful raid, another day of thanksgiving would be declared, and the Pilgrims would feast and play  soccer with severed Indian heads (true story). Even the friendly Wampanoag chieftain was beheaded, and his head was set on a pole in Plymouth, where it was displayed with pride for twenty-four years. Eventually, there had been so much bloodshed, and so many days of thanksgiving for their various victories over the heathen savages, that things got quite confusing, and George Washington suggested that one day a year be set aside to celebrate, instead of celebrating each and every successful massacre. And that is where Thanksgiving came from.

The modern tradition of Thanksgiving in America is at best a naive misinterpretation of tragic historical events, and at worst a deliberate lie set in motion to assuage white guilt for once again being unforgivably evil. If you want to continue spreading the Thanksgiving myth to future generations, that’s on you. I’ll be telling my kids the truth.

“Gather round children, Poppa has a story to tell you. No Magnus, it doesn’t have wizards in it. Zephyr honey, don’t put that in your mouth. Now stop squirming, both of you. This is important. This is a story about your ancestors, and how evil they were. Yes Magnus, if this was a movie, they’d be the villains. Why? I don’t know buddy. We’re white, so we’re pretty much always the bad guys. Deal with it.”

undocumented immigrants

About Max T Kramer

Max has been better than you at writing since the third grade. He currently lives in Connecticut, but will someday return to the desert.
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