Rush’s real story of Thanksgiving: Revisited

Whether you celebrate with a turkey, tofu or the ever-popular Turducken (a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey), the American Thanksgiving is time for family, reflection, football, food and, of course, Rush Limbaugh.

See, Rush himself is similar to a Turducken (though his cross-section would yield arrogance, bigotry, and fat).

He’s a mouthful, difficult to stomach, completely ridiculous, and he too goes well with conservative-red cranberry sauce.

More importantly, Rush embodies what we Americans need most: Truth. And lucky for us, his talk show has a tradition for telling the real story of Thanksgiving.

Every year, on the Wednesday before our national holiday, Rush references chapter six of his book “See, I Told You So” in order to re-educate his listeners on the history of Thanksgiving.

He summarizes what school taught us about the Puritans: “The Indians came out, showed ‘em how to pop popcorn, fed ‘em turkey, saved ‘em basically.”

Everyone sat down for Thanksgiving dinner, and then “we had the guts to swindle ‘em ... and we moved ‘em away from the various things that they had used religiously, peyote and so forth,” Limbaugh said.

Even though I don’t personally recall my teachers referring to the Native Americans as drug addicts, according to Rush this is common (albeit incorrect) knowledge.

Racist stereotypes aside, Rush’s real beef with the school kids’ version of Thanksgiving is that it forgets the Bible.

He criticizes schools for leaving out descriptions of the Pilgrims as “steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments.” He relates the Pilgrims’ settlement to a commune and said, “The first ever experiment with socialism failed.”  

Well, heck, why aren’t kids taught this in school? After all, the social issues of the 1600s sure correspond with construction paper and turkey handprints.

Yes, and let’s discuss genocide before naptime in lieu of a Caldecott picture book.

Our children need to know the truth about this nation’s history!

“The Pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good fortune, rather than the Indians. None of this is taught today. It should be,” Limbaugh said.  

He even refers to George Washington’s first Thanksgiving address and suggests we “count the number of times God is mentioned.”

But this notion of “thankfulness” can’t be limited to the Judeo-Christian belief system.

Just because the Pilgrims had strong connections with the Bible doesn’t make Thanksgiving a purely religious holiday. It’s a national holiday.

I understand the Pilgrims were Christian, but America is a melting pot. And if the Pilgrims are supposed to stand for religious freedom, Thanksgiving should be a reflection of that.

Unfortunately, Rush views religious tolerance as evil, insisting the real Thanksgiving story has “been hijacked by the multicultural community.”

Because who needs diversity, anyway?

In regards to Thanksgiving, what I learned about was respect. The simple concept of “sharing” doesn’t need to be likened to socialism.

In school, being told to let a classmate have a turn with the train table and not gobbling up all of the M&M’s aren’t radical, political messages.

You might even say it’s “the Christian thing to do.”

For Rush, however, sharing seems sinful.

He said the Pilgrims formed a commune because “the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community.”  

But doesn’t this system make sense for just starting out in the New World? The people were starving, many had already died. ... of course everyone would team up and stick together. They all belonged to the same church!

If I join a service group in a cross-country trip and the community van breaks down (yes, “community” van, the socialist church owns it), no one’s going to holler, “Every man for himself!”

It sounds reasonable to me that the Pilgrims wouldn’t disband right after landing, but apparently William Bradford, the Pilgrims’ leader, wrote that young, strong men “did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.”  

So, Pilgrim teenagers whined about volunteer work. ... big deal.

That just means they hadn’t read the parable of the Good Samaritan; not that capitalism triumphed.

Anyway, the “wives and children” comment probably refers to widows and orphans, not lazy men.

How I see it, the “real” story of Thanksgiving isn’t about religion or politics. It’s simple, and it’s just how we explain it to 5-year-olds: Thanksgiving is for giving thanks.

And it’s always open for interpretation. Period.


E-mail: paihenry@indiana.edu