the TRUE story of Thanksgiving!! and educational essay

Back in the day, before America was discovered by the white man, it was owned and operated by Native Americans. Only, since the country was not yet named "America," they did not call themselves Native Americans. That name was just one of the many gifts that they were given, along with guns, alcohol, and blankets infected with smallpox. So anyway, the Natives were totally into mother earth and all that. They grew crops and believed in all sorts of spiritual stuff about the ground and trees, or whatever. They sure did love them some nature.

So eventually, white people came over to America and pretty much started to have their way with it. The pilgrims came over on the Mayflower in 1620, and they were all "Holy shit, our harvests are going to be mad bountiful, yo. Jesus is the MAN! He totally wants us here, because like...England is fucking awesome and shit."

Apparently, since the pilgrims didn't have any sort of AccuWeather forecast or Doppler radar, they weren't quite prepared for the weather. The biggest mistake they made would probably be arriving in the Winter. That's kind of stupid. But tickets were cheaper, since it was an off-peak travel time. Things weren't good, and a bunch of them started dying of pneumonia and consumption. Consumption was actually what they called tuberculosis. With a name like that, you'd think it wasn't all that bad. Especially since it's a story about Thanksgiving, consumption sounds nice. But actually it was their body being "consumed" by disease, not their delicious turkey and cornbread stuffing being "consumed" by hungry pilgrims.

Anyway...there were only like 100 pilgrims that came on the Mayflower to begin with. And it was no Carnival Cruise. The people were dropping like flies. At one point, less than ten of them were even well enough to go get food and water and stuff. Eventually a tribe of Natives felt sorry for the poor bastards and decided to help. One dude, named Squanto, stayed and lived with the pilgrims and gave them animal skins and taught them how to get vegetables and basically how to survive, since the pilgrims clearly had no fucking idea what they were doing. England certainly hadn't sent their finest. Which makes sense...I mean...why risk the good ones?

Pilgrims started surviving, and due to what I can only imagine was an insatiable sexual appetite, they even started to reproduce a little. Their harvest that year was apparently really good, although compared to eating dirt and grass, anything would seem super. The survivors decided to have a little "Thank God we're not dead like those other suckers" feast, to give thanks and praise to God and stuff. Since Squanto had been so cool, they decided to invite a few Indians and their families. What they didn't know, however, is that much like Mexicans, Indian families were huuuge, and like, ninety people came. They totally outnumbered the Pilgrims, but it was all good, because unlike Mexicans, the Indians made sure to bring food and to share.

But no one was really giving thanks to each other, or thinking about things they were thankful for. They mostly were just thanking God (translation: looking for an excuse to party hard), and going through the sale papers to see what kind of Christmas shopping they could get done the next day.

And everyone lived happily ever after, as well as positively and accurately portrayed in the history books.

The End





One of the original decorations that the Pilgrims used at the first Thanksgiving. Available at your local Wal-Mart