Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of nice because it’s a nothing holiday. Minimal decorations, no gifts and not as commercial as Christmas. It’s a bit of a sad holiday in that it’s about giving thanks to native people who went on to be slaughtered for their efforts. But that’s in the past.

We aren't giving thanks to native people. That is not the history of Thanksgiving. Some of you just make up stories in your head.

I thought it stemmed from the early settlers who were posh English people and too dumb to figure out how to live off the land. Then they started starving and dying, and the local indigenous people took pity on them. They brought them food and helped them survive. Then of course they were rewarded with death later. Is that not correct?

While there was an autumn feast in 1621, the actual holiday of thanksgiving did not take root until more than 220 years later.

Sarah Josepha Hale author of Mary Had a Little Lamb originally pushed for the creation of the holiday to heal the wounds from the Civil War.

https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-and-the-mother-of-thanksgiving

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sarah-hale

Hale used her persuasive writings to support the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Beginning in 1846, she charged the president and other leading politicians to push for the national celebration of Thanksgiving, which was then only celebrated in the Northeast. Her requests for recognition were largely ignored by politicians until 1863. While the nation was in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln signed into action “A National Day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” Hale’s letter to Lincoln is often cited as the main factor in his decision. Hale retired as editor in 1877 and died two years later at the age of 92.

The concept of a national Thanksgiving did not originate with Hale, and in fact the idea had been around since the earliest days of the republic. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress issued proclamations declaring several days of thanks, in honor of military victories.

In 1789, a newly inaugurated George Washington called for a national day of thanks to celebrate both the end of the war and the recent ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Both John Adams and James Madison issued similar proclamations of their own, though fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson felt the religious connotations surrounding the event were out of place in a nation founded on the separation of church and state, and no formal declarations were issued after 1815.

On October 6, 1941, both houses of the United States Congress passed a joint resolution fixing the traditional last-Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems so gross to me to celebrate the attack on indigenous cultures and independence, but Americans seem to love that sh$t.

We aren't celebrating that. We are celebrating all of the many blessings of the prior year that we are thankful for. No one is standing around chanting "Rah rah we really stuck it to those Indians!"

You can't handle the truth, is more like it. Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, the Pilgrim-Wampanoag encounter was no first-contact meeting. Rather, it followed a string of bloody episodes since 1524 in which European explorers seized coastal Wampanoags to be sold into overseas slavery or to be trained as interpreters and guides. The Wampanoags reached out to the Pilgrims not only despite this violent history, but also partly because of it.

In 1616, a European ship conveyed an epidemic disease to the Wampanoags that over the next three years took a staggering toll on their population. Afterward, the Narragansett tribe to the west began raiding the Wampanoags. To answer this threat, Ousamequin wanted the English to serve the Wampanoags both as military allies and as a source of European weaponry. His use of Squanto (or Tisquantum) as a go-between with the Plymouth settlers also stemmed from the Wampanoags’ history of being raided by Europeans. Squanto knew English because he had spent years in captivity in Spain and England before orchestrating an unlikely return home shortly before the Mayflower’s arrival. Such dark themes are hardly the stuff of Americans’ grade school Thanksgiving pageants.

The Thanksgiving myth also sanitizes the power politics of the Pilgrim-Wampanoag alliance. For years afterward, Ousmequin threatened rivals in and outside the Wampanoag tribe with violence from his English allies. Such intimidation played a far more important role in the Wampanoags’ alliance with Plymouth than the first Thanksgiving.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of nice because it’s a nothing holiday. Minimal decorations, no gifts and not as commercial as Christmas. It’s a bit of a sad holiday in that it’s about giving thanks to native people who went on to be slaughtered for their efforts. But that’s in the past.

We aren't giving thanks to native people. That is not the history of Thanksgiving. Some of you just make up stories in your head.

I thought it stemmed from the early settlers who were posh English people and too dumb to figure out how to live off the land. Then they started starving and dying, and the local indigenous people took pity on them. They brought them food and helped them survive. Then of course they were rewarded with death later. Is that not correct?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems so gross to me to celebrate the attack on indigenous cultures and independence, but Americans seem to love that sh$t.

Obviously you’re not American and don’t know what you’re talking about.

So you’re a racist and think telling someone they are not American if they have a different view than you? Yup sounds like the post rings extra true and you’re just proving the point!

Anonymous wrote:I'm Jewish, so most of my important holidays are not holidays for the general culture, which makes it harder to hold the time for family. I like that I celebrate Thanksgiving with the rest of the country, which means we all have off of school and work.

YES. Zero guilt for celebrating Thanksgiving with the rest of the country, as opposed to Christmas or Easter.

Anonymous wrote:Food, family, football, no expectation that I buy gifts for anyone.

Came here to say the same thing.

It's exhausting because we host every year, but it's also much easier to just hit the grocery store once for everything, rather than shop for weeks for gifts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems so gross to me to celebrate the attack on indigenous cultures and independence, but Americans seem to love that sh$t.

We aren't celebrating that. We are celebrating all of the many blessings of the prior year that we are thankful for. No one is standing around chanting "Rah rah we really stuck it to those Indians!"

Since that’s exactly what happened, yes, you are in fact celebrating that. Surprised someone needs to spell it out for you. Well, not that surprised.

You’re not making sense.

Anonymous wrote:Seems so gross to me to celebrate the attack on indigenous cultures and independence, but Americans seem to love that sh$t.

Obviously you’re not American and don’t know what you’re talking about.