My Perspective On Thanksgiving

For about 2 centuries America has celebrated Thanksgiving. It is a holiday for everyone to give thanks and the pilgrims. A very small ship called the Mayflower sailed across the sea far away from the Plymouth,England in September 16,1620.The pilgrims spent at least 66 days on the ship until on November 21 the Mayflower was arriving to land. hat do we eat on thanksgiving?

Summary of ‘Thanksgiving civility’ Is More Than Just An Internet Search Term “’Thanksgiving civility’ Is More Than Just An Internet Search Term” is a short essay written by Kimberley Mangun, a professor of communication at The University of Utah, and former Oregonian. The topic of her essay is Thanksgiving Civility. The main idea of this essay is that Thanksgiving civility is important in the United States of America as well as to the founding fathers of the U.S. and that we need engage in Thanksgiving civility however we can. Mangun proposes that we engage in Thanksgiving civility by participating in service projects and helping others.

As a child growing up, our parents taught us many fictional characters and myths. For example, Santa Calsus, the Easter Bunny, and the myth behind the tooth fairy. Theses thoughts or “tales” are placed in our head so as children, we have the idea of a perfect happy world. In elementary school, I was taught that thanksgiving was simply a time to stuff your face with turkey. As a grew a bit older thanksgiving was expounded and I learned that the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in Plymouth by Pilgrims and Native Americans, and this information was still incorrect.

understand why society is taught to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr Day, 4th of July, and Memorial Day because they are all recognizing our country and how it was made better, but there is no reason at all to celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was the first time the pilgrims and Native Americans set aside their differences and feasted together. Not everybody knows what happens a couple of hours later after the meal. Everyone was friendly until the pilgrims burned as many native Americans' houses and land as they could while the Native Americans were distracted and rejoicing. The Native Americans were caught so off guard they had no time to react.

There are many things that come to mind when I think of Thanksgiving Day traditions. Growing up in rural Oklahoma we did a lot of outdoor activities, no matter what the temperature was. We would shoot clay pigeons, saddle the horses and go for a ride, sit in the deer stand before we stuffed our faces with Thanksgiving lunch, watch Christmas movies while decorating the Christmas Tree. It didn’t matter what we did, I could always count on doing something outside, and doing it with anywhere from fifteen to fifty people. Yes, I have a very large family.

The story is of a feast shared between the Pilgrims, who were among the first European settlers in North America, and the Wampanoag, a native American tribe. The tale of Thanksgiving is often told as a symbol of cooperation and friendship between

Thanksgiving a time where people sit around the table and be thankful for the things they have. However, many people know of how it became a holiday, but people don’t know is who started this holiday. The man who had started Thanksgiving was named William Bradford; It started from his marriage ceremony in the New World where the (Johnson) Wampanoags Native Americans (Whitehurst and Ruffin 18) brought over turkeys and deer to feast on (Johnson). William Bradford was the second governor of Plymouth for his wisdom and leadership; he ran for governor for thirty years with a five year break.

When one thinks of Thanksgiving, the first image to come to mind is a beautiful, stuffed turkey placed in the middle of the dinner table. However, is this turkey so vital to the Thanksgiving feast, that without it the holiday would fall apart? In an excerpt from his book, Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that the Thanksgiving turkey, despite its prevalence during the holiday, is not essential to its celebration. He establishes this claim by challenging the belief that Thanksgiving would not be the same without turkey. He also argues that if Americans are truly celebrating their thanks, slaughtering turkeys is not the way to do that.

“Thanksgiving Myths” Two myths are “The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving every year”, “The Wampanoag brought popcorn to the first Thanksgiving feast”. The truth in these myths are that the Pilgrims did celebrate thanksgiving. That the Pilgrims came to America to for land and for the thanksgiving part. I think people believe this.

This quote is said a lot during the holiday that we are in now, Thanksgiving. It is telling us that no matter how hard things really seem to be, there is always something that we can be thankful for. For example, if someone is having a rough time everyday of their life struggling to stay alive and healthy, they do have something to be thankful for. The people everyone sees on the streets asking for money have something to be thankful for. They should be thankful for having the chance to be alive at that moment.

Giving is the most important part of Thanksgiving. Another important part of Thanksgiving dinner is to be able to sit down, relax and enjoy your meal with the company of your loved ones. By taking steps in advance you can assure a successful Thanksgiving dinner, minimizing being overwhelmed. Start with your guest list and planning your dinner menu. While searching for recipes, look for simple and easy.

Much to my disappointment this never happened at my Thanksgiving dinner. This myth made me wonder how the children who's Thanksgiving did not look even close to the myth. Growing up I always had the basic parts of Thanksgiving, Turkey, parade, and family to celebrate with. I wonder how those children who live in poverty or without family feel about

What's, America without Thanksgiving? After all Thanksgiving is the one of the only holiday that reveals how America started out with Immigrants and the African Americans are one of the first immigrants to cause Thanksgiving to become a popular national holiday through soulfood(Michael Twitty, Washington Post). Secondly, soulfood shape the way Southern cooking is today. Today, we know that southern cuisine put a huge emphasis on spices just like soul food do too and that is because “ the influences for many of the Southern foods we enjoy come directly from colonial and antebellum slave quarters”(Regelski,The Soul Of Food).

In 1621 the Indians taught the pilgrims how to plant and grow crops so they wouldn’t starve. After the growing came the harvesting, it was a success. They had finally done it and would not starve through the winter. The feast or thanksgiving is all about how the pilgrims had their first successful corn harvest and had plenty of food to gather and share. They shared this feast with the Indians and their leader Massasoit.

As studied by Janet Siskind, the American Thanksgiving celebration is actually a very detailed ritual that contains many symbols. Similar to other rituals, the holiday reinforces certain social structures and “…reaffirms values and assumptions about cultural and social unity, about identity and history, about inclusion and exclusion” (168). The Thanksgiving ritual is centered around a return home, as people traveled from their urban homes back to their rural home to meet with their larger family. As a result, “the household became the site of ritual performance…” (175). The goal of the Thanksgiving ritual was to reaffirm the family and renew traditional ties, especially as more people had started moving into the cities around the time that the holiday became popular in the United States (176).