Before the end of the week many of us will be making trips across the country, or maybe just across town, to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Friends and family will gather around tables and be thankful for what they have. And why shouldn’t they?

We live in one of the greatest countries in the world – a country that stands for equality and liberty for all.

That is, as long as you ignore the millions of people we slaughtered, an event we now celebrate twice a year.

The story of Thanksgiving is rather simple, at least the way we hear it growing up in elementary school – a group of good religious people wanting freedom from the evil king flee to the New World, where they meet the kind Indians who feed them. Then they all celebrate together.

As we get older though, we have the chance to learn the truth behind the lies we are spoon-fed since birth.

The Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock on Dec. 11, 1620 carried only 102 people. But only about a third of the colonists were members of the separatist Church. The rest were nonseparatists hired by the London stock company who financed the trip, to protect the company’s interests.

The first winter was indeed a bad one; showing up in New England in the middle of winter tends to be a bad idea. The following fall was good to the settlers after losing almost 50 people to the winter. And some Indians did indeed help the settlers and were allowed to join in this first feast.

Another “Thanksgiving” occurred in 1623 after a rain followed a severe drought.

It wasn’t until June 1676 that the next day of Thanksgiving occurred. This celebration, however, was without the Indians, as it was a celebration of the colonists’ victory over the “Heathen Natives of this land,” as stated in the 1676 Thanksgiving proclamation.

So that first day we celebrate has something of an ironic twist, as the people that helped those first settlers survive were now an impediment to the way of life of the precursor to the United States.

When it was declared a national holiday by George Washington, people disagreed. These people didn’t believe that some hardships by a few pilgrims warranted a national holiday, and Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea.

Perhaps these people were aware that they would in fact be celebrating the slaughter of Indians.

And when I use the word Indian, I mean just that – Indian. There is nothing shameful or incorrect about the word. Many believe it to be incorrect because Columbus was searching for India, and named it improperly.

Columbus is indeed the source of the word, but it was in a journal where he described the people he found as “Indios” or “people of God.”

But this didn’t stop Columbus or the settlers from trying to assimilate, enslave or outright kill the Indians.

I can’t help but think of a scene from “Addams Family Values,” when Wednesday is in a play as Pocohantas, telling the Pilgrims they cannot eat with them, because of how the Indians will later be killed and put onto small plots of land selling beads.

You might have noticed that I said “twice a year we celebrate what the U.S. has done.” The other day is Columbus Day, a national holiday that “celebrates” an explorer who mistakenly found a major spring break destination, and sparked the beginning of the end for the Indians.

To most it is a meaningless holiday where federal employees get the day off. And yet to some Indians it is akin to celebrating Hitler Day to the Jews.

So why is Thanksgiving such a bad holiday? We try to believe that it is simply a day for giving thanks and nothing more, and yet our history on which it is founded shows this simply to be untrue.

I don’t expect people to suddenly change their minds about Thanksgiving, but at least take some time to think.

Blaine Moyle is a junior in English from Des Moines.