El Día de Acción Gracias, el primer feriado auténticamente de los Estados Unidos, se celebra de mil maneras diferentes en todo el país cada año. Aunque muchos pueden participar en la celebración 'tradicional' al disfrutar del pavo asado, pastel de calabaza y salsa de arándano, no hay una sola manera de dar gracias. A lo largo de los siglos desde el primer Día de Acción de Gracias, diferentes grupos han traído a los Estados Unidos sus propias formas de dar gracias. A medida que la cultura y la población ha cambiado, también ha cambiado el día feriado más emblemático estadounidense, asumiendo las tradiciones y (lo que es más importante) los alimentos de quienes vinieron aquí en busca de una mejor vida, y dieron gracias cuando lo encontraron.
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Desde entonces, cada grupo que emigró a Estados Unidos ha traído sus propias tradiciones y alimentos, que se suman a la tradición del Día de Acción de Gracias y la enriquecen. Sin embargo, aunque todos los años muchos estadounidenses toman tiempo para celebrar sus buenas fortunas y dar gracias, algunos no recuerdan que la prosperidad de los europeos y luego de los grupos de inmigrantes en Estados Unidos se logró mediante la opresión y el sometimiento de los nativos americanos. Para protestar por las injusticias que han enfrentado en su propia tierra durante cientos de años, muchos nativos americanos han elegido participar en el Día Nacional de Luto y el Día en contra de Acción de Gracias. Ambas son protestas de los nativos americanos celebradas en Acción de Gracias, que buscan llamar más la atención sobre el abuso de su gente.
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Thanksgiving, the first uniquely American holiday, is celebrated in a million different ways across the country every year. Although many may partake in the ‘traditional’ celebration through roast turkey, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce, there is no one way to give thanks. Over the centuries since the first Thanksgiving, different groups have brought to America their own ways of giving thanks. As America’s culture and population changed, so too did its most iconic holiday, taking on the traditions and (more importantly) foods of those who came here looking for a better life, and gave thanks when they found it.
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The first Thanksgiving took place in 1621, as the Pilgrims celebrated their first successful harvest in the New World. They owed this harvest to the local Native Americans mainly of the Wampanoag tribe and a Patuxet man named Tisquantum (Squanto). Tisquantum had been kidnapped, brought to Europe, enslaved, learned English, and then had returned to America to find his Patuxet village decimated by plague (most likely caused by European contact) a few years before the Pilgrims’ arrival. Despite this abuse at the hands of Europeans, Tisquantum aided the Pilgrims in their first year, showing them how to harvest seafood and cultivate corn. He also acted as an interpreter and diplomat between the Pilgrims and the local Wampanoag tribe, whose leader Massasoit gave the unprepared Pilgrims food during their first winter.
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The Native Americans taught the Pilgrims what to plant and how to do so in the spring of 1621, and by the autumnal harvest, 90 of them were invited to share in a three day feast with the 53 Pilgrims who had survived the year. At this First Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims gave thanks for the invaluable aid they had received from the Native Americans, and both groups hoped for a peaceful and friendly future. However, it would not be long before English incursions onto Wampanoag land incited King Philip’s War in 1675 and ruined the peace they had built with the Native Americans.
That first holiday in 1621 was formed from the mixture of the Pilgrims’ tradition of having feasts to give thanks to God after surviving difficult times, and the vital knowledge and help that they received from Tisquantum and the
Wampanoag.
Since then, every group to immigrate to America has brought its own traditions and food, which add to the Thanksgiving tradition and enrich it. Yet, while every year many Americans take time to celebrate their good fortunes and give thanks, not enough remember that the prosperity of Europeans and then later immigrant groups to America was achieved through the oppression and subjugation of the Native Americans. To protest the injustices that they have faced on their own land for hundreds of years, many Native Americans have chosen to participate in the National Day of Mourning and Unthanksgiving Day. Both are protests by Native Americans held on Thanksgiving, which seek to bring wider attention to the abuse of their people.