Poll: Fewer Americans Rank Thanksgiving One of the Most Important Holidays

Oops! Burned the bird.
cookelma/iStock/Getty Images Plus

This year Thanksgiving was rated a less important holiday than last year, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Thursday.

In 2020, 46 percent of Americans ranked Thanksgiving as one of the “nation’s most important holidays.” That number has tumbled five points to 41 percent in 2021.

But only 11 percent believe Thanksgiving is “one of the least important, while 45% rate it somewhere in between.”

The polling results come as America celebrates its 400th Thanksgiving, 401 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock to escape religious persecution in Europe.

Breitbart News’s Rebecca Mansour writes about Thursday’s momentous celebration:

If this fact is news to you, I’m not surprised. After all, there was very little fanfare last year to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, an event which President John Quincy Adams described as the “birthday” of our nation. But that seminal moment in world history passed with barely a mention.

This year, you’ll see more about the inflated price of Thanksgiving dinner than about the 400th anniversary of the holiday. And while it’s true that Bidenflation has made this year’s turkey feast the most expensive in living memory, no one who knows the true history of the first Thanksgiving can ever doubt that the Pilgrims paid a greater price for their meal than anything we ever will.

But you would have to know their story to understand that. And these days, the Pilgrims are being airbrushed out of our cultural memory.

In fact, NPR reported Native American tribes are traveling to Plymouth Rock Thursday “not to give thanks, but to mourn Indigenous people worldwide who’ve suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment.”

NPR quoted Kisha James:

“We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims,” said Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the event’s founder.

“We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies. Wampanoag and other Indigenous people have certainly not lived happily ever after since the arrival of the Pilgrims,” James said.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.