Thanksgiving is just around the corner and a lot of us will be heading home to spend time with our families, eat our body weight in food and celebrate the yearly traditions involved with the holidays.

But what exactly is it that we are celebrating? According to American history, we are celebrating the nice friendly dinner between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans when they first came over on the Mayflower. We all know the story. Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, of the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to fish and farm and agreed to be their interpreter. Those friendly little Pilgrims were just so grateful to him and all of the Native Americans that they threw a huge festival to celebrate the harvest which is now known as the first Thanksgiving. They were all great friends and everyone lived happily ever after.

Too bad that is not really what happened.

In reality, Thanksgiving is basically just a holiday celebrating the genocide of almost an entire ethnicity of people. While sure, the first Thanksgiving really did happen and the Pilgrims and Native Americans had a harvest festival, the Pilgrims then continued on to slaughter the Native Americans and steal their land.

For some reason people tend to forget that whole part to the story.

The Native Americans helped the Pilgrims and those who did not, had every right not to. The Pilgrims raped and killed their people just for land. I do not think you would be super friendly to them either.

It is so important to teach and understand all of American history, not just the positive parts. Our ancestors did some messed up stuff and we need to acknowledge that, especially during Thanksgiving. I mean, they literally almost wiped out an entire group of people, we should not be celebrating that.
While I do not support the history of Thanksgiving, I can totally get behind the message it is trying to send: be thankful.

Not only for the big things you may have accomplished, but also the little things in your life.

Life may suck right now. It always has its ups and downs and sometimes you have a lot of ups and other times you just have seemingly never ending days of down. Whether your life is going great or absolutely horrible you can always find something you are grateful for.

Maybe you just ate the best dinner at Convo or maybe your favorite show is still running on TV. Maybe the dryer did not steal any of your socks or maybe your crush just snapchatted you. Even if everything else in your life has gone to crap, maybe someone let you pet their dog on your way to class this morning.

Be thankful that there are people who care about you, even if it sometimes feels like no one does. For us students, be thankful that you are getting an education. Be thankful that you are able to even read this article. Be thankful that I am even allowed to write it without it being censored.
If absolutely nothing else, be thankful that you are alive and breathing.

I am not telling you to completely disregard Thanksgiving as a holiday.

Go stuff your face with food, spend time with your family and be thankful.

Just understand and acknowledge that Thanksgiving itself is not something that we should celebrate.