Chapter Eleven - Lies We Still Tell

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lies We Still Tell

WE’VE COME A long way.
But the air around Thanksgiving is still thick with fairy dust.

The stories might be outdated. The costumes might be fading.
But the myths?
They’re hanging on like relatives who won’t leave after dessert.

Let’s clean house.

No fluff. No sugarcoating. Just the hits — and the scalpel.

“The Pilgrims came for freedom.”
Not exactly.
They weren’t looking for religious freedom in general — they already had that in the Netherlands.
They wanted control.
Their own community, their own rules, their own God, their own land.
The freedom they wanted was theocratic autonomy — not a pluralistic society.
They didn’t want everyone to be free.
They wanted themselves to be in charge.

“The natives were grateful.”
Nope.
The Wampanoag entered into a strategic alliance out of desperation.
They were trying to survive a plague and balance power against rival tribes.
They didn’t bring food out of kindness.
They brought 90 armed men — just in case.

“Everyone got along.”
For about five minutes.
The alliance was tense, transactional, and temporary.
Within a generation, the colonists were raiding villages, breaking treaties, and justifying slaughter with scripture.
The First Thanksgiving was a footnote.
The real story was conquest.

“Thanksgiving is just a nice tradition.”
It’s not just anything.
It’s a holiday layered with myth, memory, marketing, and erasure.
It’s not evil — but it’s not innocent.
It’s a curated illusion built on selective amnesia.
And for many Native people, it’s a day of mourning.

These aren’t gotchas.
They’re facts.

And the only reason they still sound controversial is because the myth machine did its job too well.

But history isn’t a pageant.
And gratitude isn’t an excuse.

If we’re going to keep carving this bird every year, we should at least stop stuffing it with lies.