Poison is Poison Folklorist/Parent Seeks Curricular Antidotes to the Myth of the First Thanksgiving
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Abstract
Many food rituals, especially those that are repeated annually, involve the recounting of a sort of master narrative that is designed to be etiological. The American holiday of Thanksgiving contains one such origin myth. The story of the “First Thanksgiving” tells about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians celebrating their friendship by sharing the harvest feast in 1621. The myth is pervasive throughout culture, manifesting in written, oral, visual, and cinematic forms. Although the myth is based on fiction, legend, and public relations rhetoric, rather than historical fact, a plethora of institutions actively perpetuate it, including textbook authors, teachers, children’s literature authors, television/filmmakers, advertising specialists, greeting card designers, website producers, and parents. In counterpoint to an interpretation that “imagines the nation as a fixed, monolithic, and self-enclosed geographic and cultural whole” (Kaplan 1998:583), in this essay I look—from the perspective of a parent and folklorist—at several specific cases in which American cultural representations of Thanksgiving reinforce stereotypes that can do real damage.
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