Thanksgiving is a holiday that all Americans, regardless of their race or even country of origin should celebrate. In fact, I believe it is such an important and valuable holiday that Thanksgiving should be celebrated in all other countries of the world. It is not about any religion, belief or opinion. It is quite simply about coming together and being grateful for the things you have.

Other cultures such as the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians celebrated their own version of Thanksgiving, giving thanks to their God’s (notice they all have different Gods but that does not matter in their way of celebration) for the blessings they have been granted with. The first “American Thanksgiving” was a product of the Native Americans and English settlers working together in order to help teach and develop prosperity for one another. The Native Americans of the Wampanoag tribe helped the English to grow crops such as corn. To celebrate the fruits of the labor on both sides, the fall harvest, they came together over a grand feast.

Two groups of people from opposite sides of the Atlantic with no common language (except for Squanto and Abenaki who both spoke English), God, nor even views or beliefs about the world, celebrated everything they had together. They understood that together, they could accomplish far greater things than they could apart. The English settlers understood that even though they may have had a rough year (only about half of the English settlers who came over on the Mayflower ever made it to see American land) they still had a lot to be thankful for and celebrate. The Native Americans also knew they had a lot to be thankful for despite having new settlers coming into their land.

We tend to only focus on everything that is going wrong in our lives instead of what is going right. In our busy lives and society, that is understandable because it is difficult to set aside time to truly think about what is going right. Especially because once you really start thinking about it, the list goes on and on. So with this lack of time, we prioritize our thinking to include mostly the things going wrong and ways in which to fix them. That is why I love Thanksgiving so much, it is a day set aside to focus very specifically on everything good in our lives. We need that.

I would argue however, that we need Thanksgiving more than ever this year, especially right after the presidential election. We have been fighting our opposing opinions relentlessly over the past year and in some extreme and very sad instances, those opinions have torn people who love each other apart. Is there ever a better time for us to come together despite our differences and simply be thankful for the millions of blessings we all have in life, including one another? I think not. If the Native Americans and English Settlers can come together to help one another and celebrate despite all of their differences, which were much more vast than ours today, why can’t we?