Giving Thanks Around the World
Photo Credit: photo from creativecommons.org
The pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving.
November 11, 2009
Kathy O'Neill, Assistant Opinions Editor
Filed under Special Features
Sometimes, I just want to be a two-year-old again. Who wouldn’t want to be adorable, carefree, and ask “Why?” to every little thing everyone says? Adorable and carefree aren’t exactly words I’d use to describe myself today, but at least I never lost the habit of asking why. Why, for example, do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
Throughout history, many variations on the American Thanksgiving tradition have been celebrated around the world to celebrate the harvest and to thank a culture’s god or gods for the food. In Greece, they honored Demeter, their god of grain, each spring with a day of fasting and a day of feasting. The Chinese celebrate the three-day Chung Ch’ui festival, celebrating the birthday of the moon and that year’s harvest with special foods and a feast. Hebrews traditionally build small huts of branches, like those their ancestors used, and then eat in them during their feast. The Egyptians honored Min, their god of plants and fertility, at their harvest festival.
But what about the United States? As such a diverse country, there is no one god that we are giving thanks to.
However, since the first pilgrims came we have wanted to give thanks for the bounty we have. In 1621 the pilgrims celebrated their second harvest in the New World. After a hard first year, they finally had surplus food and enough to last them the winter. The governor of the colony proclaimed a day of thanksgiving that became a tradition each year. In 1817 New York made Thanksgiving an official custom, and by 1863 Abraham Lincoln had made it a national holiday. Now if only the Pres teachers would recognize it as a holiday and not give us homework!
Today, Americans have a lot to give thanks for. We are one of the richest and best-off countries in the world, with numerous rights and a democracy that we so often take for granted. Here at Pres, we can give thanks for delicious cafeteria food, our friends that make us cake for our birthday, a safe school environment, a fantastic education and opportunities that many other teens don’t have. Thanksgiving should be an especially poignant holiday for all of us since we have so much to be thankful for.
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