Credit: FOX Sports Archives

While I do love my mother’s green bean casserole (tastes much better than it sounds), I am most definitely celebrating football above all else. Thanksgiving is a strange holiday in the first place. I guess it celebrates the Pilgrims surviving the winter in Massachusetts, aided by local native American; and through dumb-luck, one of which spoke English. Squanto, the translator for the Pilgrims, was probably the main reason it was possible for them to survive the harsh winter in the early days of their colony. Squanto was a native who was taken to England years earlier, probably against his will, and educated there before returning to the Americas. Without him, the Pilgrims don’t make it, and colonial history would have been much, much different. What most people don’t know about the Pilgrims is that about fifty years later, the colonists of Plymouth massacred the descendants of the people who made their grandparents’ survival possible, basically committing a genocide to expand their territories. This is a factual part of the story of the Pilgrims and natives, but we conveniently leave that part out of the festivities; with that added part it doesn’t feel much like it should be a federal holiday. Regardless, since Abraham Lincoln made it a federal holiday over 160 years ago, Thanksgiving has been celebrated by Americans for generations; eating stereotypical 1600’s Massachusetts food staples like turkey, sweet potato, and corn that dominated the first survival feast shortly after the Mayflower ran into Plymouth Rock.

Credit: World History Encyclopedia (worldhistory.org)

Credit: Mortal Kombat (1995)

I get why Lincoln made it a holiday, especially during the Civil War; he needed something to bring people together during tough times. While it is also important to enjoy this mostly football holiday, you should also remember that those with native blood certainly don’t want to celebrate this holiday which glosses over their tortured history. Those who don’t like Turkey aren’t exactly jacked up for this event, and it’s not beloved by those who can’t tolerate any more pumpkin spice by this point in the fall. It is equally important however to remember that not everyone loves football, and it’s this day every year when you get to expose them as fraudulent Americans, and educate them about the greatest game there is, teaching them how to become a Real Americans.

Credit; WWE