Thanksgiving is a day filled with food, family, and football, but also controversy. Thanksgiving is celebrated in many different ways by UPrep students.
“Every year, we cook a lot of food,” 9th grader An Sen Wang said. “We cook turkey, and then I help make all the stuffing and mashed potatoes. And then we bake a cake or a pie. We just celebrate it by having a lot of food, sitting together around the table and saying what we’re thankful for.”
Sophomore Eliot De Haan also celebrates Thanksgiving almost every year.
“I usually celebrate with just my family and sometimes some friends,” De Haan said.
De Haan emphasizes that giving thanks is always part of his family’s celebrations.
“I think it’s pretty meaningful. I feel like that’s a big part of the meal for my family,” De Haan said.
Although Thanksgiving is widely celebrated today, many have criticized it for its controversial history. According to the Smithsonian Institution, Thanksgiving has its roots in the early 17th century when English Pilgrims and Native Americans came together for a feast of Thanksgiving. The most famous event associated with Thanksgiving is the 1621 feast at Plymouth, Massachusetts, between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people. However, this gathering was not initially intended as a holiday celebration. It was simply a feast to mark a successful harvest after a difficult year.
According to The Atlantic, Thanksgiving misrepresents the centuries-long violent relationship between the Europeans and Native Americans. Critics of Thanksgiving also see the holiday as the start of land dispossession and forced assimilation of Native People. Even though Thanksgiving has its many controversies, students and their families still choose to celebrate.
“I think as long as I can remember, we’ve always known about this part of the history,” Wang said. “We just focus on the thankfulness aspect, and then the sitting down and having good food together, and that’s how we celebrate. We don’t talk about the story, but we know what was behind it, and we are aware of that.”
De Haan also chooses to focus more on giving thanks rather than on the history.
“I don’t really focus on it that much, but I know general stories,” De Haan said. “I feel like my view of the holiday has been shifted, but I think I still celebrate the giving thanks portion of it, like we don’t really focus on the pilgrims and all that.”
Wang emphasizes that it is crucial that people to know the history behind Thanksgiving.
“I think it’s important just to give the context of the holiday keep people informed,” Wang said. “And let them celebrate how they want to celebrate.”
