The holiday season is upon us. A time for giving, sharing and record-breaking suicide rates. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, the nostalgic thing to do would be to discuss what Thanksgiving is all about.

As we all know, the story of Thanksgiving revolves around the British pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. A week later, the rock got kind of crowded so they left to settle parts of New England.

The origin of Thanksgiving itself is a feast that took place on an unremembered date sometime during the autumn of 1621 to celebrate a bountiful harvest after the pilgrim’s first winter in the New World.

But this story is wrong. So wrong. I would angrily point my finger at you as I say, “SO wrong” while poking you really hard in the chest. But this is not possible in the written word and this annoys me.

The harsh reality is that the Thanksgiving story fed to us by our grade-school teachers is nothing but a whole lot of hooey. Forgive my language. This is really disappointing because during my kindergarden Thanksgiving play, I really gave one helluva performance as a tree. The key is to really immerse yourself into the role and become the tree. It’s called method acting.

But that’s beside the point. The real meaning of Thanksgiving is to give thanks to all those Native Americans who understood America’s belief in Manifest Destiny and graciously stepped out of the way as we expanded westward.

The gracious and polite thing to do would be to throw the Native Americans one awesome feast. So we did. Thus the name, “Thanksgiving”. Thanks for giving us all your land.

Few Americans refuse to accept this theory. This may be because most Americans are not historians who have failing marriages and a drinking problem. Which, by the way, is something that I’d like to see changed. You’d never guess it, but drunk historians throw the best parties.

Instead, most Americans see Thanksgiving as a time for forced family gatherings which either end in your uncle getting drunk and sobbing uncontrollably or suppressed angry squabbles between your aunt and the guy she never should have married. Or in some cases, really uncomfortable moments with that cousin you have funny feelings for.

Anyway, I would like to wish the dozen people who read this a happy Thanksgiving. The rest of you can go baste a turkey.

Except if you’re Native American… You gave us your land. Happy Thanksgiving.