Origins and Turkeys

 "I am Pocahontas, a Chippewa maiden.  Wait, we cannot break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours.  Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations.  Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs.  We will sell our bracelets by the roadside.  You will play golf and enjoy hors d'oeuvres.  My people will have pain and degredation.  Your people will have stick shifts.  The gods of my tribe have spoken.  They say, do not trust the Pilgrims" - Deetz, "Partakers of our Plenty" p. 23, attributed to Addams Family Values. 

Reading Deetz's "Partakers of our Plenty"  tied together many of the ideas which we have studied this semester, as well as gave some historical background to the holiday whose vacation we college students are all eagerly awaiting.  In my early elementary school days, I remember making turkey decorations and paintings to bring home, as well as several mock feasts in the style of the "Pilgrims."  I also remember learning in middle school that the Thanksgiving I had always known hadn't exactly happened as the picture books describe.  This seems to be the case for almost all historical events we learn.  We begin with one impression, are later told something else, and perhaps more ideas on top of that, and then, at some point, we decide what we think ourselves.   I highly enjoyed Deetz's writing because it made the claim that, yes, we do not have the historical facts right.  He addressed the inaccuracy of our modern Thanksgiving tale, but then proceeded to inform us of his own conclusion: that Thanksgiving is important as a myth as much as a story.   

The above quote illustrates this, as Wednesday Addams's quote expresses the innaccuracies and hipocracy of the American Thanksgiving tradition through the eyes of Pocahontas.  While Pocahontas was not actually a part of the Plymouth story, including her as the narrator of events further institutes the idea of innacuracy.  It also points out that often, in the course of history, we make the story what we need it to be to keep ourselves motivated, or to allow ourselves to live at peace with our lives despite what actually happened.  In this way, Thanksgiving is itself much like Pocahontas: a symbol of what we needed in a New World and an affirmation of European dominance in this New World.  Today, we configure the story into what we need it to be:  a tale of unity, of thanks, and of respite.  In the fast-paced, individualistic world we live in today, I think Thanksgiving has become somewhat of a retreat into what we wish the past was- a moment to be calm and connect with the origins of our country- real or imagined.