We, the citizens of the United States, have much to be thankful for as we observe Thanksgiving 2024. This is despite our nation’s polarization and election trauma. We are among the most fortunate of the world’s 8.2 billion people, enjoying boundless freedoms guaranteed and protected by our Constitution. We enjoy expansive opportunities and bountiful natural resources. This is why so many people want to settle here, many risking their lives to do so.

Let us give thanks for everyday amenities we take for granted. First, our overabundant and safe food supply. We produce enough food to feed our 346 million people and still export more than any nation. This Thanksgiving, 46 million turkeys are consumed priced as low as 27 cents a pound (I bought two). But we must be cognizant that hunger persists and 733 million people around the globe lack access to sufficient calories and nutrients, and 2.8 billion cannot afford a healthy diet.

We have a safe, abundant water supply we consider a basic right. But globally, 2 billion people lack safe drinking water at home. The third human need is shelter and only 0.002% of our people are homeless with many government-subsidized housing programs. But 2% of the world’s people are homeless and 1.6 billion people worldwide (20%) live in inadequate housing conditions.

All of us have sanitary sewage systems. Globally, 3.6 billion people do not have access to safely managed home sanitation. We have cheap pickup and disposal of garbage and recyclables. In low-income countries with most of the world’s population, 90% of solid waste is disposed of in unregulated dumps or openly burned with serious health and environmental consequences.

Our electrical service is dependable and universal. About 840 million people, 10% of all humans, do not have such access. Service is intermittent or unaffordable for many others. In the United States, 92% of households have at least one car while 90% of people outside of the country do not own a car. One-third of the Earth’s people do not have access to the internet.

This Thanksgiving, let us reflect on our good fortune to reside in our great country and how we can make it greater and more equitable. Let’s try to help others, including the 47 million people in our country who are food insecure. Giving to your local food bank is a good place to start.

I love Thanksgiving and the warm glow from celebrating and feasting with my large family, but as I have aged, I am prone to some historical reflections on the origin of Thanksgiving feasting and the many myths surrounding this cherished holiday.

First, the 1621 Pilgrim celebration at Plymouth was not the first Thanksgiving. Giving thanks for the Creator’s gifts had been a part of Wampanoag life for millennia as well as for other Native Americans. Spanish explorers and English colonists celebrated religious services of thanksgiving years earlier. Such celebrations after a successful harvest in England and throughout Europe are as ancient as harvest time itself.

The Pilgrims did not refer to themselves as such but as “separatists,” leaving the Church of England. They had fled England to Holland. English merchants paid for their voyage to bring them to the mouth of the Hudson River to settle and to export materials such as timber, furs and crops to enrich their patrons. A storm forced them to Plymouth which they described as a “hideous, desolate wilderness full of beasts and wild men.”

The site was a former Wampanoag village of 2,000 called Pawtuxet which a plague, originating from Europeans, wiped out leaving bones and bodies lying there.

The Wampanoags were not invited to the 1621 feast but came running at the sound of gunfire from celebratory settlers. Thanksgiving stories depict the natives as inherently friendly, but their chief, Massasoit, was rightfully suspicious of the Europeans. They had experienced violent encounters with Europeans for 30 years, with natives captured and sold into slavery. So, Massasoit carefully observed the settlers for six months before contact.

Sorry to report that there is no evidence that turkeys were consumed at the 1621 Thanksgiving. Massasoit, the native’s high chief, came with 90 men, joining 50 surviving Pilgrims from 102 who left England in 1620. The natives brought five deer, so venison was a major item. The settlers had fowl that likely included plentiful geese and ducks. Other likely foods consumed were corn, herbs, onions, squash, beans, nuts and shellfish.

The English had captured a dozen natives in 1614 and sold them into slavery in Spain. But one named Squanto spent several years in England, learned English, and returned in 1619 to find his Pawtuxet villagers gone. Ironically, he functioned as an interpreter and mediator between Plymouth’s leaders and the Wampanoags leading to Pilgrim leaders signing a peace treaty with Massasoit in 1621.

Squanto taught the settlers how to plant corn, which became an important crop, as well as where to fish (cod, striped bass and eels) and hunt — a major reason for the plentiful 1621 harvest.

Massasoit’s gamble of aligning with the Plymouth settlers protected them from other tribes and enriched his tribe with English goods but long-term consequences were disastrous. After the merchant patrons gave up on the settlement, the settlers turned to the beaver trade, saving the colony. As beavers in Europe were driven to near extinction, beaver pelts quadrupled in price in 1627. Millions of beavers were killed in North America to supply the enormous trade for beaver felt in men’s hats and other clothing. Beavers also were killed for meat.

With thousands of more settlers also engaged in the trade, beaver populations crashed, victims of a systematic slaughter from as many as 400 million to 100,000 by 1900. This caused the demise of the well-functioning natural systems beavers helped to create.

By 1640, the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the settlers pushed Massasoit and the Wampanoags toward landlessness and servitude. In 1675, his son, Metacomet, chose to fight resulting in King Philip’s War (Metacomet’s British name). The English won, wiping out 40% of their population and subjecting many survivors to slavery. The local tribal populations declined from 70,000 in 1621 to 20,000 by 1657 with only 1,000 Wampanoags left.

This genocide of Native Americans across the continent continued until the 20th century.

In 1976, President Gerald Ford designated a week in October as Native American Awareness Week. Subsequent presidents extended this to the full month of November, to honor their heritage, culture and contributions. I doubt many readers are aware of this designation or any celebratory events.

Regardless of the historical roots of Thanksgiving, this special day calls for us to reflect on our blessings and give thanks. We all should heed these words of President Ronald Reagan in his Farewell Address to the Nation on Jan. 11, 1989:

“I’ve thought a bit of the ‘Shining City upon a Hill.’ The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined … [as] an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here … looking for a home that would be free … [That shining city] in my mind was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.”

Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. Contact him at gwwabc@comcast.net.