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Blog: Thanksgiving - Neglected Holiday, Native Americans & Black Friday |
For those who are interested in Magick. What is the purpose and history of the Thanksgiving holiday? This article by Jill Stefko explores this holiday from it's celebrated beginnings to today. Enjoy!
Peace & Love -
Thanksgiving: Neglected Holiday, Native Americans & Black Friday
Nov 10, 2010
By Jill Stefko
In addition to Thanksgiving, November is Native American or AmerIndian Month. The Wampanoagan Tribe helped the Pilgrims survive their first New World winter by teaching them survival skills. Some food, native to America, featured on the holiday’s tables, have AmerIndian symbolism.
Thanksgiving: Childhood Memories
When I was a child, we created clay pilgrims for our class’ Thanksgiving display and made turkeys from pine cones. We learned about the Wampanoagans, “People of the Dawn,” who helped Pilgrims survive their first winter. Wampanoagan Samoset’s English was poor, so he brought Squanto, who knew English well, to help teach the Pilgrims survival skills. He taught the Pilgrims how to grow beans, corn, squash and other crops, using fish as a fertilizer. Squanto showed them which plants were poisonous, those used for healing and taught them how to draw sap from maple trees, dig for clams and other survival necessities. In 1621, Captain Miles Standish invited Chief Massasoit and ninety braves, including Squanto and Samoset, to join them for the first American Thanksgiving.
First Thanksgiving Celebration
I learned more about the holiday when I wrote my first Thanksgiving article The Wampanoagans, who helped the Pilgrims, had harvest celebrations in which they gave thanks for abundant crops to Kiehtan, the Creator. They believed corn, their most valued crop, was his gift and expressed gratitude to the Spirits of the Game for animals killed for food.
According to The Food Book, James Trager, (Grossman Publishing, 1970), there are only two brief contemporary accounts about the first Thanksgiving menu, written by Edward Winslow and William Bradford. According to these, celebrants ate venison, fowl, maize, fish and wheat breads. It’s likely that rabbit, eggs, shellfish, barley, beans, squash, carrots, onions, peas, cabbage, cheese, pumpkin and Indian puddings, nuts and cornbread were on the table because these foods were available in 1621.
Turkey, native to America, was, most likely, one of the birds because it was and is the traditional Thanksgiving entrée. In the 1500s, Spanish explorers took wild turkeys home from Mexico. They were successfully domesticated throughout Europe. Among the Pilgrim’s Mayflower cargo were English turkeys.
Thanksgiving Becomes Neglected Holiday
When I was a sophomore at Moravian College, I, cynically, began to call it “National Pig-Out Day” because it seemed to have lost its meaning. People called it “Turkey Day.” Thanksgiving was celebrated by feasting and watching parades and football games. It was the same old dinner with traditional fare and after-dinner activities. The day usually consisted of eating and women cleaning up and washing dishes after dinner while the men watched football on TV or dozed.
AmerIndian Symbolism of Thanksgiving Foods
Venison and fowl, probably turkey and goose, were mentioned in contemporary accounts. It’s likely that rabbit, although not specified, was included. AmerIndians believed that animals had symbolism. When they killed them for food, they gave thanks and honored the animals’ spirits and their powers. Vegetables and grains were also symbolic.
- Venison: Deer symbolizes innocence and gentleness. The doe represents subtlety and gracefulness; the stag, purification, independence and pride.
- Goose: Symbolizes the Sacred Circle, its life cycles, family and the call of the quest.
- Turkey: Called Ground Eagle by some tribes, is symbolic of harvest and shared blessings of Mother Earth.
- Rabbit: Keynotes are new life, fertility, intuition, balance and rebirth.
- Beans: The Three Sisters in AmerIndian legend are maize – yellow and white corn, beans and squash. After corn, oldest sister, was planted, beans were next so their vines could grow around cornstalks, then squash, the youngest, which grows close to the earth. The way they grew is symbolic of community survival and staples in tribes’ diets.
- Maize and Cornmeal: Ceremonies were held for planting and harvesting corn, a grain. The New England tribes’ spring Green Corn Ceremony was to pray for bountiful harvest. In August, the Green Corn Ceremony celebrated the first one. Cornmeal symbolizes fertility, healing, rituals and powers of people and animals.
- Pumpkin: This member of the squash family represents the sun and, according to some Native American tribes, symbolic of personal power.
- Wheat: The grain celebrated abundance and was used in rituals to give thanks and pray for a bountiful harvest that would last until the next year.
- Cornucopias: AmerIndians’ Horn of Plenty was a basket shaped in the form of an upside-down tornado, filled with vegetables, symbolic of shared harvest’s abundance. Thanks are given to the Deities. The Wampanoagans gave these to the Pilgrims to alleviate their fear of scarcity.
Thanksgiving: The Neglected Holiday
Thanksgiving, sandwiched between Hallowe’en and Christmas, appears to be the forgotten holiday.It seems it’s become one that’s celebrated by feasting, parades, football games and making plans to shop on Black Friday, not a day giving thanks for abundant food and other blessings.
I proposed that the name “Black Friday,” be changed to “Green Friday” because of its other connotation. Originally, the term meant one of stock market disasters. September 24, 1869 was dubbed Black Friday because this crash was created by gold speculators who tried to corner its market, causing the gold one’s collapse, which made the stock market nose-dive. On Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the market fell steeply, signaling the beginning of the Great Depression. The largest one-day drop in the market’s history happened on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by over 22%.
US retailers see sales increase on the day after Thanksgiving and consider this to be the start of the holiday shopping season, so they offer bargains and open early to draw customers. It’s dubbed Black Friday because stores have enough sales to put them "in the black," an accounting term referring to writing debits in red ink; profits’ in black.
Sources:
Animal Speak, Ted Andrews, (Llewellyn Publications, 2002)
Medicine Cards, Jamie Sams & David Carson, (Bear & Company, 1988)
Posted from http://www.suite101.com/content/thanksgiving-neglected-holiday-native-americans--black-friday-a307248
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