On 28 November, Thanksgiving is celebrated in the United States of America.

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in the United States, Canada, some of the Caribbean islands, and Liberia. It started as an occasion to express thanks for the  yearly harvest.

There are harvest festivals that also offer thanks in Japan and Germany. Labor Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in Japan on November 23.  It is an occasion for honoring work and productivity. Japan’s Labor Thanksgiving Day originated with an ancient Shinto harvest ceremony known as Niiname-sai.

In Germany, The Harvest Thanksgiving Festival is a Christian event celebrated on the first Sunday of October. It is a religious celebration and is not mainly about food.

India’s Harvest Thanksgiving Festival is called Pongal, commemorated also in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Pongal is celebrated over several days, especially in the Tamil community. It usually happens around the middle of January.  It is dedicated to the Hindu sun god, the Surya, to state appreciation for the harvest.

As most Thammasat University students know, Thanksgiving in America involves a story about how Native Americans helped early European settlers who were havign trouble feeding their families during their first years in the New World. Since the settlers eventually would kill most of the Native Americans and take over their land, there are mixed feelings about this holiday on the part of the Native Americans who survive today.

The TU Library owns a novel that discusses some of these feelings, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It is shelved in the Fiction Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.

Its author is Sherman Alexie, a Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-American author who often writes about his experiences as an Indigenous American . He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington, USA.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is about a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., who is 14 years old. His education away from the reservation is the subject of the novel.

As TU students may know, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the U.S. Department of the Interior. After the traditional lands of the many different tribes of Native Americans were taken away from them, they were forced to live on different lands, most of them in remote areas which were very difficult for farming.

The TU Library owns several books about the history, culture, and heritage of Native Americans. Although the history of the Native Americans is tragic, in his books, Sherman Alexie tells the tale with some humor. Two years ago he informed an interviewer who asked what he told his children about Thanksgiving:

You just tell them the truth, the long historical nature of it. They’re quite aware of what happened to us, the genocide and the way in which we survive and the way in which my wife and I have survived our individual Indian autobiographies. I guess it’s trash talking, “Look, you tried to kill us all and you couldn’t.” We’re still here, waving the turkey leg in the face of evil.

Alexie added that for his family, Thanksgiving was about making the holiday their own:

You take the holiday and make it yours. That doesn’t strip it of its original meaning or its context. There’s still the really sad holiday as well. It is a holiday that commemorates the beginning of the end for us, the death of a culture. I guess you could say Thanksgiving is also about survival, look how strong we are.

Thailand and Thanksgiving

In the Kingdom, as the Bangkok Post reported in November 2015, there are a number of turkey farmers. They include the Benjaponsiri Turkey Farm in Nong Bua Lam Phu, northeastern Thailand.

Last year, Khaosod English interviewed Kanisorn Mongkorn, a turkey farmer in Isaan. Khun Kanisorn referred to Thanksgiving as the farang turkey holiday.

Some Americans and Canadians have forgotten the religious origins of the holiday and think of Thanksgiving only as a time for eating turkey. Some even refer to it as Turkey Day, Turkey is a difficult bird to cook because much of it can be dry by the time it is cooked through.

Here are some thoughts about Thanksgiving by celebrated American writers:

I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

• Henry David Thoreau, in a letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (December 1856)

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.”

• Mark Twain, in Mark Twain’s Autobiography

• Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
  From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest,
  When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
  The old broken links of affection restored,
  When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
  And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
  What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
  What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pumpkin

• And let these altars, wreathed with flowers
  And piled with fruits, awake again
  Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
  The early and the latter rain!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, For an Autumn Festival

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)