Calendar of EventsNovember

National American Indian Heritage Month

November

November is National American Indian Heritage Month. It was first declared in 1990 by President George Bush as a way to recognize and celebrate the tribal cultures of the Native American and Alaska Native people. Since then, the current president releases a proclamation each year declaring National American Indian Heritage Month.

The purpose of National American Indian Heritage Month is to recognize the important role that Native Americans have played in our history, as well as to acknowledge the injustices that they have suffered. It is also an opportunity to look to the future, to examine the challenges that Native Americans still face, and how those challenges can be overcome.

Election Day

November 3

Election Day is the day set aside by law for U.S. citizens to vote for candidates for public office. Since 1845, it has taken place on a Tuesday—the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, in even-numbered years. Tuesday was chosen because Sunday was a day of rest for Christians, and in the 1800s, having elections on Monday might require people to travel on Sunday to get to the polls. Tuesday was chosen as the next available day.

While state elections might be held every year, federal elections take place only in even-numbered years. So, officially, Election Day only takes place every other year. Elections for congress are held every two years, and elections for president are held every four years. Election Day in 2008 will be on November 4.

Some people have proposed making Election Day a national holiday, because of the sometimes-small turnout of voters in U.S. elections. These people feel that having elections on a workday means that people don’t have time to get to the polls. Making it a national holiday would give people the day off, and they’d have the entire day to find their way to the polls. For now, the proposal has not gathered much support, so citizens have to find time before or after work if they want to perform their civic duty and vote.

Veterans Day

November 11

Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day. It celebrated the end of fighting between the Allies and Germany in World War I, on November 11, 1918. It became a national holiday in 1938. The name was changed to Veterans Day in 1954, after the United States had been through World War II and the Korean War. It became a day to honor all the veterans of the U.S. military.

In 1968, Veterans Day was moved to the fourth Monday in October in order to give federal employees a three-day weekend for the event. Veterans groups protested this change, however, and continued to observe the day on November 11. In 1975, President Gerald Ford officially returned Veterans Day to November 11.

Many people confuse Veterans Day and Memorial Day. The difference is that Memorial Day honors military men and women who died in service to the United States, and Veterans Day honors all veterans of the military, both living and dead.

Thanksgiving Day

November 26

Thanksgiving Day in the United States celebrates the first harvest held by the settlers at Plymouth in 1621, in what is now Massachusetts. Because Plymouth and the pilgrims get so much attention, we sometimes forget that Plymouth was not the first English colony in the New World, the pilgrims were not the first English settlers, and their thanksgiving feast was not the first held here.

In fact, the first permanent English settlement in America was Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. Jamestown was founded thirteen years before Plymouth, and in December of 1619 the settlers at Jamestown held a thanksgiving feast—one full year before the pilgrims.

So why is the arrival of the Mayflower celebrated and not the Godspeed, the ship that brought the first Jamestown settlers here? It actually came down to publicity and politics. For about 200 years, America did not have much of a story to go with its origin. Plymouth was not considered anything special—just another New England port town. And Jamestown had long since been mostly plowed up for farmland.

But in 1820, the famous speaker Daniel Webster was invited to Plymouth to commemorate the bicentennial of the pilgrims’ landing. Because he was talking to Plymouth townspeople, Webster spoke about “our Pilgrim Fathers” and presented them as national heroes. Webster’s speech inspired people in the northern United States to start thinking of the pilgrims as the “first Americans.”

At first, people in the Southern states were not that interested in celebrating Thanksgiving. Since it focused on a New England story, Southerners saw it as a “Yankee” tradition. In fact, Thanksgiving did not become an official national holiday until 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. This, of course, was a time when Southerners did not have any say in what happened in the Union. The first official Thanksgiving Day, as presented by President Abraham Lincoln, was held on August 6 of that year. After the war, in 1867, President Andrew Johnson made the event an annual occurrence, falling each year on the last Thursday of November.

Also, the food associated with Thanksgiving—turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie—is not exactly historically accurate. While the pilgrims may have had turkey, it’s more likely they ate duck or goose at their first thanksgiving. The Wampanoag Indians who joined the pilgrims at their feast probably brought deer, fish, eels, and shellfish such as crabs or clams.

McDougal Littell Current Events