While others gush on social media or interviews over how they celebrate the holiday with their families and friends, these celebrities publicly denounce Thanksgiving for multiple reasons.
- Nov 24, 2019
AceShowbiz - Thanksgiving is one of the most-anticipated holidays by people including celebrities. Who wouldn't love spending time with family and friends while having some good meals? But apparently, there are some people who don't.
For multiple reasons, there are some celebrities who have publicly denounced Thanksgiving. Some of them think that the reason behind the holiday is not something to celebrate, while some others liken the festivity to massacre. Meanwhile, there are some who simply don't like the food.
With this year's Thanksgiving is just around the corner, check out the list of the stars who likely will not celebrate it and find out why they do so.
1. Cher
Cher has always been known as an outspoken public figure. She doesn't hesitate to voice her opinion about things on social media, including sharing why she is against Thanksgiving and it has something to do with the fact that its emergence is from the genocide of Native Americans.
Back in 2013, the music icon responded to a fan's question on Twitter about why she didn't celebrate the holiday. "4 me & my Family, it's a day, When every1 is free 4Diner & a movie, Not 2 celebrate the beginning of a GREAT crime," she wrote, before elaborating, "Stealing Land,from a ppl,Who believed,Owning LAND Was LIke Owning SKY! We gave them Blankets laced w/Smallpox."
2. Rowan Blanchard
Author, activist and former Disney star Rowan Blanchard has long been proven wise beyond her years. However, she apparently doesn't have nice words for Thanksgiving which she previously referred to as "strange, state sanctioned annual celebration of colonial genocide" in one of her Instagram posts. In 2017, the star took to her account to encourage "white people" to donate to The Navajo Water Project instead of celebrating the holiday in the usual way.
She explained in the post that giving back to people "who this 'holiday' implicates and triggers institutionalized violence for" was "one way of us to start paying very basic, owed reparations for the millions of ways we implicate systematic violence against PoC everyday, with or without knowledge of doing so." She went on saying, "reminder that America as we know it is stolen land, 'founded' by white settlers who stole from, killed, and raped Native Americans."
3. Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie has a big family and fans might think she would spend Thanksgiving by having a dinner and gorging on turkey while telling each other what they are thankful for. However, the "Maleficent" actress, who is known for her charity work, especially in helping people of other cultures and ethnicities, is allegedly not among those people who are excited about the holiday.
According to a source, the actress "hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans. To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn't her style. She definitely doesn't want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder." It is said that Angelina often takes her kids on a trip out of the country during the holiday so that they aren't exposed to the tradition.
4. Sarah Silverman
Also not a fan of the holiday is Sarah Silverman, who has made headlines as an outspoken critic of American culture for years. The stand-up comedian often uses her wit to criticize America's relationship to Thanksgiving and how the festivity means the killing of thousands of turkeys.
"The turkey we kill is a symbol of the Native Americans we killed," Sarah could be heard narrating a video she posted on Facebook for Thanksgiving special. She continued sarcastically, "We're so grateful for their farming techniques that they taught us, as we learned to harvest our own food on the land we took. We are giving thanks for being American. God bless America and its greedy self righteous heritage."
5. Shailene Woodley
Actress Shailene Woodley has always been showing her support for Native American communities and that unsurprisingly makes her against celebrating Thanksgiving. In addition to joining solidarity to block the North Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota that led to her arrest back in October 2016, the actress doesn't hesitate to publicly denounce the holiday in interviews in attempt to boycott the national holiday.
Speaking to TYT Politics, the actress said, "Thanksgiving was founded on a massacre. From the time we're little kids, we cut out cardboard paper pictures of pilgrims and feasts and turkeys, and yet none of our children know the truth about not only what happened to Native Americans when Westerners decided to colonize this country, but what is still happening to Native Americans."
6. Mayim Bialik
Mayim Bialik has some strong opinion about Thanksgiving and she has several reasons for it. "The Big Bang Theory" alum explained that one of the reasons she didn't like Thanksgiving was because she's a vegan and is against killing innocent animals such as turkeys. "I don't like the tradition of killing a bird that in most cases has been genetically modified so that it's so big that it can't even stand up and then you lay its carcass on a tray and you carve it up and then you eat it. I don't like that tradition," she revealed in a 2017 YouTube video which was titled "4 Reasons I Don't Like Thanksgiving."
She also mentioned that she didn't like that people use this holiday as an excuse to eat too much food and that the holiday had similarities with Jewish holiday Sukkot, which is a harvest festival with plenty of food. Mayim touched genocide in her last reasoning. "The truth is, European invaders came to this land, took it from the indigenous people, raped, pillaged, gave them all sorts of diseases, called it their own, and desecrated a culture. It is one of the grossest examples of genocide in recent history and much as I don't want to think about that, it's really hard for me not to think about that when I think about Thanksgiving," the actress said.
7. Alicia Silverstone
Being a vegan, Alicia Silverstone is also among celebrities who don't celebrate Thanksgiving. She makes her stance known by publicly denouncing the holiday, which she seems to have re-christened "save the turkey day," on social media posts.
In 2016, she took to her Instagram account to share a couple of snapshots of a lamb nuzzling a sheep to mark the holiday. "Approximately 46 MILLION of these sweet beings are slaughtered for #thanksgiving each year!" she captioned the post, before encouraging her followers to "give thanks without centering the holiday around the body of someone that didn't want, or deserve, to die." She also noted that there were "many insane delicious alternatives to turkey."
8. Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is known for his satirical jokes and he uses it to express his dislike towards Thanksgiving. During one of the episodes of his "Daily Show", the comedian mocked the true reason why people started to celebrate Thanksgiving in the first place.
"I celebrate Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way," he told the audience on his Comedy Central show. Referring to the fact that the celebration was founded after Westerners colonized America and killed Native Americans, Jon continued joking, "I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast and then I killed them and took their land."
