Thanksgiving - Day of Mourning, Day of Remembrance
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash Heads up, this article is full of death and betrayal. Today, the United States and Canada celebrate Thanksgiving. Most Americans (at least the ones I know) generally believe that the celebrations were modeled after a post-harvest feast between the Pilgrims--English colonists of Plymouth, and the Wampanoag Tribe--Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who formerly occupied parts of what are now the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. 2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims in New England, but how has 400 years of legend of and tradition changed the holiday? The People Behind the Holiday The Pilgrims were a group of English Protestant Puritans who were exiled to the Netherlands in the early 1600s. The Dutch people at the time were already a more free-spirited group, which made the committed Puritans uneasy. The Pilgrims could practice their religion freely, but they wanted more power and control over their subjects. The ki
