Question: So What Is Thanksgiving Anyway?

Well you may have heard the president stated that there is a war on Thanksgiving. Not sure what he’s talking about.

But yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published two different takes on Thanksgiving, and I want to share them now because it confused me and I’d like your thoughts and opinions.

In their Green Sheet feature, they stated that George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving:

In 1789, Americans observed a day of thanksgiving set aside by President George Washington to mark the adoption of the Constitution of the United States

And then on the front page of their news section, they published one around the ‘historical story’ that most of us were taught as children. The one that ignored the plight of Native Americans and the genocide perpetrated upon them by the arriving colonists.

And Wikipedia seems to indicate it was off and on again over the early years of the nation…and they also say it early on was to celebrate the Constitution. And that yes, the early Pilgrims and Puritans had their own celebrations based on the harvest and their own religious beliefs.

But if the actual national Thanksgiving is related to the Constitution, how did we revert to including Native Americans and Pilgrims and what not in the holiday instead of keeping it as a national holiday of law and order and democracy and republican government?

And wouldn’t it be far better to celebrate in Washington’s suggested manner? A celebration of nationhood and unity? Maybe we should have a war on Thanksgiving and bring it’s celebration back around to being thankful for our US Constitution!

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