For months, polls indicated that Francesca Hong, a chef and a democratic socialist state lawmaker, was the clear front-runner in the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin.

So when Hong narrowly lost to her opponent David Crowley on Tuesday, some in the political world pointed to Thanksgiving. Or rather, a six-year-old, now-deleted social media post from Hong dismissing the cherished American holiday and saying it glorified colonialism.

“Cancel Thanksgiving,” she wrote in the post on X. “Should have done this in 1621.”

Though a number of factors led to the election’s outcome, and as establishment Democrats have pushed the party to focus on courting moderates, Hong’s comment on the holiday sent political pundits and strategists into a frenzy. A debate ensued around whether reframing the quintessential American holiday was too radical an idea in the current political landscape.

Hong was labeled the ‘Grinch’ of holidays.

Hong’s comment resurfaced in the days leading up to the election in a swing state and came alongside her other takes on almost every holiday: She also seemingly dislikes Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July and Halloween and using Christmas trees as computer screen backgrounds.

All of which became rich fodder for her political opponents and the right-wing media, feeding into Republicans’ longstanding gripe that liberals, with their progressive interpretations, are ruining all holidays. The conservative National Review magazine named Hong the “Grinch of all holidays” and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, claimed on X that Democrats like Hong “openly hate America.”

Even Democrats tried to distance themselves from the blast radius; in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a figurehead of progressive politics, labeled the Thanksgiving comment, along with Hong’s other posts, as an example of outdated and ineffective “Woke 1.0” — a strand of left-wing political discourse that emerged around 2020, as the country grappled with social justice issues, like racial inequality and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Hong tried to walk back those posts, saying in an interview with Politico that she “had some hot takes, some bad takes.” In an interview with CNN last week, she responded to a question about her Thanksgiving statements by referring to her experience as a chef, saying that anything that brings people around a table to talk is “a good thing.”

But, she added, “Thanksgiving is also a time that is incredibly painful for many people in our communities.”

Views of the holiday have grown more complex.

The reaction to Hong’s Thanksgiving post is emblematic of a broader reckoning among many Americans with the country’s checkered history.

Popular depictions of Thanksgiving trace the fabled autumnal tradition back to a three-day feast in 1621 between Pilgrims, who arrived in Massachusetts from Plymouth, England, and members of the Indigenous Wampanoag tribe to celebrate a successful harvest. Over two centuries after that shared meal, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday.

Some Americans, especially on the left, have questioned the accuracy of that lore, saying it glosses over massacre, war, exploitation and slavery.

Schools across the country have rethought how they teach students the history of Thanksgiving, and even “Saturday Night Live” has produced sketches that poke fun at the holiday, including one starring Will Ferrell and Maya Rudolph that reimagines the first Thanksgiving meal as tense, rather than friendly.

Still, a vast majority of Americans still celebrate the holiday, a Pew Research Center survey found in 2024. Thanksgiving remains a federal holiday, and organizations are unlikely to change how it is observed.

Have any other holidays become political?

The Thanksgiving debate is reminiscent of debates around the decisions in many states and communities to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day either alongside or instead of Columbus Day as a way to acknowledge the people who were already living in North America thousands of years before the Italian navigator arrived.

A similar debate bubbled up before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed legislation in 2021 that designated Juneteenth — the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States — a federal holiday.