Photo: The Pilgrims' landing site, Plymouth Rock, MA, USA

Thanksgiving is celebrated in the U.S.A. every year on the last Thursday of November and in Canada on the second Monday of October. It’s the busiest time of year for domestic travel in the U.S.A., on the road and at airports around the country. Thanksgiving feels a lot like Christmas, turkey with all the trimmings is served as the traditional meal, both Thursday and Friday are public holidays and NFL games are required viewing on Thursday.

Christopher Columbus and the Native American Indians

Thanksgiving celebrates the first successful harvest collected by the Pilgrims in their new North American settlement as a result of help received from Native American Indians. They weren’t the first though to make contact with indigenous people of the Americas.  Ahead of their arrival a wave of disease introduced by Christopher Columbus in 1492 had swept across the land and emptied entire Indian villages, the colonists settled in one and named it Plymouth.  The native population had little immunity to European diseases and fell victim to measles, small pox, influenza, mumps and a host of other deadly microbes that withered their population. From 1492-1650 contagious disease claimed 9 out of 10 lives.  Unfortunately these health unintended problems were unavoidable, even inevitable; what happened in its wake however was not.

Arrival of the Pilgrims in Plymouth

The Pilgrims arrived into Plymouth in December 1620 following an arduos 66-day journey across the Atlantic from Plymouth, England and their problems didn’t end there. They failed to bring enough food, they arrived too late in the year to plant any and were generally poorly prepared to survive. Unfamiliar with the area and lacking the knowledge, tools, and experience to effectively exploit the land that surrounded them meant that for the first few months two or three died each day from scurvy, lack of adequate shelter, or poor nutrition.

A military alliance with the Wampanoag Indians

Once the Pilgrims discovered that the nearby Wampanoag Indians placed grain and precious ornaments with their dead they decided to loot the graves. The Wampanoag Indians were greatly outnumbered by a neighbouring tribe The Narragansett Indians as a result of disease and decided to seek military alliance with the well armed Europeans. They taught the Europeans how to survive and negotiated a peace treaty in which they both pledged to maintain friendly relations and come to each other’s aid in case of outside attack.

Learning to live off the land gives birth to Thanksgiving

The Native American Indians understood that you cannot keep taking from the earth without giving something back and it has long been customary for them to have ceremonies in which they express thanks for a bountiful harvest. Through the alliance, the Europeans learned to plant and care for Indian crops, to hunt and fish, and to do all the things that were necessary to partake of the natural abundance of the earth. As a result they overcame their inexperience and in the autumn of 1621 had their first successful harvest. They decided to celebrate their success with the Indians by hosting a harvest festival, now celebrated as Thanksgiving.

War ends the peaceful Pilgrim-Indian relationship

Forty years later full scale war erupted between the Pilgrims and the Indians and unsurprisingly ended in the defeat of the Wampanoag. Much like the Australian Aborigines the Wampanoag Indians had become a subjugated minority in the land of their ancestors. Today their language and land has been almost completely lost. There are currently two enclaves of Wampanoags in Massachusetts, one at Mashpee, the other at Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.

Black Friday

Black Friday follows Thanksgiving and refers to one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Stores offer huge savings and often open their doors at 5am for shoppers eager to purchase the best bargains. The ‘Black’ is a reference to the amount of spending that often pulls store finances out of the red and back into the black. It’s then on the weekend that Christmas takes hold. Decorations go up, music starts playing in stores, giant inflatable turkeys are replaced with a giant inflatable Santa Claus and Christmas in on the way.

The Mayflower Steps in the Barbican area of Plymouth, England are where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from. Their voyage ended at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, MA, U.S.A.