laurenwaters

We sometimes forget the great story behind our holidays, since each holiday usually requires so much hustle and bustle. We forget while our grocery carts are crammed inside overcrowded aisles. We focus on cleaning the house, making a new recipe, ordering desserts that will surely please. Some, even resent the holiday since it usually entails twice as long a trip to relatives you might not even want to see to begin with.

Children, of course, remember,  since they’ve spent all week sitting cross-legged in circles listening to the tale and metamorphosing hand prints into fat turkeys.

But there is a great story here.

A group of desperate, starving outcasts and adventurers struggle to tame a foreign wilderness and barely make it through their first winter. If it hadn’t been for the generous Native Americans, teaching them how to live of the new land, they would surely have perished. I’m sure it was difficult for these pious settlers to rely on these ‘primitive’ people, but they had no choice. After their first bountiful harvest they celebrated with a three-day feast with the natives who made it all possible.

You could decide to end the story here on a happy note, or you could use it as a cautionary tale, since things didn’t turn out so well for the natives.

So, for some of you, you might embrace this time to give thanks for what we have. While others might decide not to travel or host their difficult relatives in hopes of avoiding yet another Thanksgiving family argument. Either way, it all goes back to the original Thanksgiving story.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!