Reply to Should so called “thanksgiving” be a national day of mourning?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]There were other “thanksgivings” in that era. [/b]I wonder why we don’t include others in our history books.

Here was another one days after the 1637 massacre:

[i]“A day of thanksgiving. Thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children.”[/i]
- John Winthrop, governor of Bay Colony
[/quote]

While I was totally open to this interpretation, Snopes rates as "false"[b] the claim that the Pequot massacre was the basis for our modern Thanksgiving. [/b]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thanksgiving-massacre-pequot-tribe/

We spoke to David Silverman, professor at George Washington University, and author of the book “This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.” When asked about the connection between the 1637 day of thanksgiving and the holiday we know today, he said: “There is no question that Connecticut and Massachusetts had a thanksgiving after [those events], a lot of people did it [...] but to draw the connection between that and the modern holiday is untenable. Thanksgivings were a tradition amongst English people often to mark a gift from god [...] [The quote’s usage] is taking that particular thanksgiving out of context. There were hundreds, if not thousands of thanksgivings, some of them were related to military conquests of Indian people and most were not.”

This viewpoint was echoed by Chris Newell, director of education of Akomawt Educational Initiative, and the former education supervisor at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. “When it comes to the 17th century English 'days of thanksgiving,' they have no resemblance to the holiday we celebrate today,” he told us. “That holiday was not created until the 19th century. The English day of thanksgiving would have been a day of prayer. If they won a victory in battle that would have been a day of thanksgiving, which was normally a day of fasting, totally different from a feast.”

Instead, Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a gesture of reconciliation. "In October 1863, Lincoln issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation, after the victory of the Union over the Confederacy: 'I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving….' Thanksgiving day owes its origins in part to Sarah Josepha Hale (a woman also known for penning the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'), who lobbied through a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress and other government officials for such a holiday."

And yes, the Wampanoag participated in the feast, but it wasn't a simple gathering of friends. "The so-called first Thanksgiving was the fruit of a political decision on Ousamequin’s [the Chief of the Wampanoag] part. Violent power politics played a much more important role in shaping the Wampanoag-English alliance than the famous feast. At least in the short term, Ousamequin’s league with the newcomers was the right gamble, insofar as the English helped to fend off the rival Narragansetts and uphold Ousamequin’s authority. In the long term, however, it was a grave miscalculation. Plymouth and the other New England colonies would soon go on to conquer Ousamequin’s people, just as the Frenchman’s curse had augured and just as the Wampanoags who opposed the Pilgrims feared that they would."[/quote]

You misread.

I said there were “other thanksgivings”, not that the massacre thanksgiving was the basis for future thanksgivings. 
[/quote]

You specifically mentioned the massacre and gave a quote along with it. Why do you lie when you anyone can click on the previous posts link?[/quote]

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