The Untold Story of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and that means that us parents are faced with the question of what to tell our children about this (somewhat controversial) holiday.

You probably remember having a part in the annual school play reenacting the “First Thanksgiving” and you know that’s no longer (and never was) appropriate because it paints a pretty inaccurate picture of what happened all those years ago. But if that’s not what happened, what did? In this episode I share what I’ve learned about the untold story of what actually happened during that harvest festival in the autumn of 1621. 

I cover:

-The events leading up to the harvest festival, including the initial meeting between the Europeans and the Wampanoag people 

-The role of Tisquantum (Squanto)

-The festival itself and the events that followed 

-Sarah Josepha Hale-The Mother of Thanksgiving 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-an American poet who carefully crafted the romanticized version of the Thanksgiving story