Thanksgiving According to the Tea Party

The official version of the Thanksgiving tradition says that it originated in one of the first Anglo-Saxon colonies in the New World. The colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts were having a party to celebrate the abundant harvest of 1621, which saved them from dying of starvation. They also wanted to thank the Wampanoag Indians for their indispensable assistance in teaching them how to farm the land and how to fish.

Now, in the climate of bitter ideological dispute in which the country finds itself, even a secular family holiday widely celebrated in American society has been converted into a motive for political controversy. Determined to reinterpret some of the country’s fundamental principles, the tea party has an alternative vision of Thanksgiving that fits in with its crusade against socialism.

As Kate Zernike clearly explains in The New York Times, another interpretation of those historical facts, proposed by conservative historians for years, has become popular among the militant members of the tea party, according to which the abundance of that harvest was due to the colonists’ rejection of collectivism as a system of land ownership. This system would discourage hard work since the benefits would not go to the individual directly but to the group as a whole.

It is true that at the beginning there was community property for crops, which was exploited by the inhabitants of Plymouth as a group. Also, it is beyond controversy that the governor, William Bradford, abolished the collective system, or “socialist” if you prefer, in order to distribute the land in individual plots.

However, it is not clear if this change was responsible for the improvement in agricultural productivity, as the tea party claims. Other historians theorize that the improvement in productivity was the result of the progressive learning of farming techniques, or that the colonists were unable to work together because of their different cultures and origins. What was a more productive farming method for some was for others the result of laziness.

Putting aside the historical debates, what there is no doubt about is that Thanksgiving is becoming more and more a prisoner of consumerism, for this was the first time when almost all of the big stores opened their doors without waiting for Black Friday to start their sales.