Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in America. Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving with turkey and pumpkin pies.

From The Saturday Evening Post of 1943

Christmas and Thanksgiving are holidays baked into the minds of Americans. This essay deals with Thanksgiving. Europeans discovered the New World. We were taught in school that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. According to Western history books, the Vikings were the first Europeans to find the New World.

Nonetheless, the New World was discovered by descendants of Asians who migrated to North America via the Bering Land Bridge as early as 30,000 years ago. Their migration path was along the Alaskan coast and through Canada, spreading south and east in the US. Native Americans in New England have been there for 12,000 years.

Migration paths from Asia

George Santayana warned Americans in 1905, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The mythology of Thanksgiving is that the English arrived via the Mayflower. When the Pilgrims arrived and were greeted by the Wampanoags tribe, several of the tribe were fluent in English and had been to Europe prior to the arrival of the Mayflower.

Why would some Native Americans be able to speak English and have been in Europe before the Mayflower arrived and the Pilgrims set up the Plymouth Colony in December of 1620? Several European countries had been involved in the slave trade.

Ousamequin, the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, wasn’t happy about the English arriving in 1620. However, he had lost a majority of his tribe due to epidemic diseases brought by the Europeans for which they hadn’t built up any immunity. Ousamequin took the opportunity to link up with the English to help him deal with discontent in his tribe.

Another fact that we need to understand is that the first Thanksgiving wasn’t a time of turkeys and fillings. For nearly a century and a half, Thanksgiving was a time of thanking God and fasting. It wasn’t until 1769 that some of the Pilgrims' descendants started writing about Thanksgiving with turkeys and dressing. Why? There was a growing dislike of America being an English colony. Rev. Alexander Young authored a book with this footnote about Thanksgiving: “This was the first Thanksgiving, the great festival of New England.”

Thanksgiving turned into a reason for independence from England. It was just another way of viewing America as something different than some colony of the English. A century later, Lincoln used Thanksgiving as a holiday during the Civil War.

Today, a century and a half after the Civil War, America faces another national crisis. Trump has nominated a questionable list for our federal government's Cabinet and other administration heads.

Tomorrow, we will sit around a dining room table and thank God for all we have. I don’t claim to be some deity. However, I don’t think I need to be thanked if I were some deity. I would rather have my believers spend their time and talents reaching out to others who need assistance. I’d much rather you engage with someone than pay homage to me. Hey, I’m God; I really don’t need words of praise and gratitude. However, I don’t have to look very far to see someone struggling.

Therefore, after you enjoy the turkey and pumpkin pie, make a promise to yourself. Reach out to a person or family. If you are genuinely grateful for your life, help others improve their lives. Next Thanksgiving, those you helped can do the same to others as you did for them.

Let me tell you a secret. It is my mantra about life: It is in giving that we get. The more you give, the richer you will be. It sounds like an oxymoron. It isn’t a contradiction in life. My mantra makes life better for others while it makes you richer and happier. When those you help try to tell you how much your assistance means, tell them that you have a mantra: It is in giving that we get.