As we approach Thanksgiving Day, the Leftist noise gets louder and louder.
Brianna Lyman, writing for The Federalist, says, "When the first Thanksgiving took place, my family didn’t have a heated home. They didn’t have refrigeration or the luxury of running to Shop Rite for last-minute fixings. They were actually fighting not only for their lives, but for something much greater than themselves — and of course, the left is trying to destroy that very thing."
Yes, her family was among the first settlers to arrive in the New World.
Her observations are priceless.
Be informed, not misled.
Brianna says, "As I sit here writing this piece, I’m keenly aware of my warm socks, my sweatshirt, and the heat humming quietly through my home. In the kitchen, I’ve already prepped pie crusts, peeled potatoes, and stacked ingredients that will all need tending on Thursday morning — Thanksgiving. And while I’ll be rushing around in a hurry Thursday morning, bemoaning the lack of space in my oven or too many people in the kitchen, it’s honestly pretty easy in comparison to what my ancestors were doing 404 years ago."
She says, "Admittedly, I only recently discovered that my 11th-great grandfather, Thomas Rogers, came to America on the Mayflower. He signed the Mayflower Compact and endured the harsh conditions of the first winter, but didn’t survive it. His son, Joseph, my many-times-over-great-uncle, survived the cold, the sickness, the uncertainty. And nearly a year later, he was present at the first Thanksgiving (sorry to all the Virginia folk who stake a claim to another first Thanksgiving)."
She notes, "There are only two primary sources describing the first Thanksgiving. Edward Winslow’s account of the first Thanksgiving in “Mourt’s Relation,” describes how the Pilgrims, with their “fruits of our labors,” shared a three-day feast with “many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others.”
The aid of the Wampanoag tribe was essential. They befriended the Pilgrims and taught them how to hunt, fish, and farm various crops that were new to the Englishmen.
“And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty,” Winslow’s account continues.
William Bradford’s account, in “On Plimoth Plantation,” describes how the Pilgrims were fitting up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in "good plenty."
"And now, knowing my ancestor’s son was actually there", Lymann says, "the scene feels less like a chapter in a history book and more like a living inheritance, something that is passed down and a reminder that the Pilgrims weren’t merely characters in a book, but real people whose courage and faith became part of the story my own family belongs to."
But it’s that sense of inheritance, of belonging to a shared American story — a shared nation– that the left wants to dismantle — and they do it through maligning Thanksgiving.
The Left is not thankful, and they tell a very different story. Don't be misled.
The Daily Orange published these sentiments:
- With Thanksgiving approaching, our columnist urges students not to sleepwalk through the holiday’s origins. We must take accountability for the genocide of Indigenous people, which formed the traditional American identity.
- Our curiosity with Thanksgiving’s history usually stops at the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving Feast of 1621. This singular event has overwhelmingly informed and reduced the holiday to its present-day narrative. If contextualized properly, though, Thanksgiving becomes innate to the inhumane crimes against Indigenous peoples.
- Thanksgiving is, in essence, a celebration of genocide. The mass rationalization of this fact sustains the contemporary structures that inform American culture itself. Without genocide, the foundation of our traditional American identity falls apart.
The Daily Orange continues, "In 1775, at the gates of the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered Maj. Gen. John Sullivan and his men on a murderous campaign in present-day upstate New York against the Indigenous people of the land. His response to the alliances created between five Iroquois Nations and the British didn’t seek peace or diplomacy, but mass erasure."
The article claims."By the end of the Sullivan Campaign, over 40 Indigenous villages were destroyed. The survivors became refugees or victims of a later death at the hands of European settlers."
And they claim "Food sources, like the American buffalo, were exterminated in an effort to create mass dependency, death, and compliance."
The article is long and winding, tracing a contextualized "history" leading into the Trump Administration.
The writer, Mateo Lopez-Castro, concludes his rant with "It’s our choice to decide whether or not we care to sleepwalk through this reality. To transform our culture, we must first transform ourselves."
And therein lies the goal of the Left: To mislead.
The Daily Orange’s Mateo Lopez-Castro suggests that Americans should “recognize modern examples of genocide, colonialism this Thanksgiving.”
According to Lopez-Castro, “Thanksgiving is, in essence, a celebration of genocide.” The ACLU of Wyoming suggested Americans should “start by acknowledging” that they’re on stolen land and “challenge the false and harmful Thanksgiving origin story.”
The Nation describes the classic Thanksgiving story as one “steeped in colonialism, violence, and misrepresentation.”
They also ask if we should even continue to recognize Thanksgiving Day.
The answer is "Yes."
Brianna Lyman concludes: "A unified country with a unified people is more difficult to crack. A country with no shared memory is easier to mold into something entirely new."
And once you understand that broader agenda, the rest of the narrative makes sense. And that’s why the attacks from the left fall apart the moment you begin to look at the real history.
Claims of genocide and brutality and shame ignore that the Wampanoag signed a peace treaty with the settlers that lasted for 50 years, but that, more importantly, the first Thanksgiving was not a celebration of conquest but rather one of acknowledging that the Pilgrims managed to survive a brutal first year and kept alive the experiment in self-government through faith.
What makes me especially proud of my ancestors and the first Pilgrims isn’t that they survived, or that they struck a peace treaty with the Wampanoag, or that they learned to cultivate the land. It’s that they laid the foundations of something far bigger through the grace of God.
Takeaway
Forty-two people signed the Mayflower Compact. It was barely 200 words, but it was one of the first attempts at self-government in the New World.
It said:
“IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN." “Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.”
The compact recognized that legitimate government derives from the people (and as the Pilgrims knew, ultimately from God), rather than a distant monarchy. It was the same type of foundational idea that our Founding Fathers later affirmed in the Declaration and the Constitution.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Thankful. Be Grateful. Be Prayerful.