Thanksgiving clearly has nothing to do with the harvest because the harvest was over months ago
In England they have a designated day for getting together with family and eating turkey
They also have a state church, and they never had America’s pretensions to being a secular country
This historian says it’s all about the Civil War:
Well, you have harvest festivals when the harvest is over (you’re kind of busy when the harvest is going on). But maybe I’m letting my Canadian concept of Thanksgiving (which is primarily about pumpkins) affect my idea of American Thanksgiving when they are presumably totally different things.
No Thanksgivings at all this year. Because of life and circumstances beyond my control, no one has invited us, and I can’t be bothered to cook a turkey for 2 today.
But I am all about going to the market tomorrow to get a beautiful fresh turkey for cheap, and making the usual big turkey dinner for the husband, who loves roasted turkey, and the grandson, who loves food. With stuffing, both in the bird and outside, to suit everyone; holiday mashed potatoes, 5 lbs of potatoes, boiled and mashed with cream cheese, butter, sour cream, chives and finely chopped onions; green bean casserole with fancied-up white sauce instead of canned soup; and of course canned cranberry sauce. Like @nungesser, my family expects the classics.
But maybe I’ll make a cranberry pie, if fresh cranberries are cheap, too. @anon3072533, you made me hungry!
Hope all you people have a wonderful feast, with or without family and friends. I’m thankful for you!
Hugs to you, and best wishes for a lovely dinner tomorrow
So throw this in for consideration. My family tradition is to go to our church to serve a community thanksgiving dinner for those who have nowhere to go or lack resources. We have been doing this for years, and my wife, queen of organization that she is, has turned it into a finely tuned machine. We have a pretty solid idea of what to expect, and had prepared enough for our “normal” clientele, plus some figuring on some for pur norml increase. Until this year. Meals are served 11-2. We were out of turkey, stuffing, ham, potatoes and sweet potatoes by 12:30. Tea was gone by 1. Green beans by 1:30. Cranberry sauce was still available in quantity by the end. Yeah, I don’t understand some people. Desserts still in quantity as well, but the “real” food cleaned out way way early. In a very strongly Trump voting area, the economic picture has grown increasingly grim, but this was a shock.
And then there’s this asshole:
Wow. Thanks for reporting in. This is really sobering news.
I struggle daily with the obvious disconnect Cult45 has between Republican “policies” and what those policies mean for regular working families, the indigent, chronically ill, unhoused, etc.
Thank you for serving your community, in more ways that one.
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris’ “The First Thanksgiving, 1621” is one of the most recognizable images associated with the fall holiday.
The painting re-imagines a Thanksgiving feast between the Wampanoag, native to Massachusetts, and the Plymouth pilgrims they helped adapt to a new environment.
It’s a beautiful image of cooperation and peaceful coexistence.
Just one generation later, a war between the Wampanoag and Plymouth settlers shattered that vision.
The wife and son of the Wampanoag leader, Metacom, were sold into slavery. After Metacom was captured, his body was dismembered. One history details how the arrival of Metacom’s severed head in a Plymouth church was celebrated — on Thanksgiving.
Native Americans struggle with Thanksgiving simplifying history
The Continental Congress received word on Oct. 31 that British General John Burgoyne had surrendered at the Battle of Saratoga in upstate New York. Today, many historians look at that battle as a major – or one of the turning points – for the American side in the Revolution War, said Dan Roe, vice president of interpretation at the York County Heritage Trust.
In response to the victory, the Continental Congress formed a committee of some of the delegates, including Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee, to consider having a day of Thanksgiving. The Continental Congress issued a proclamation on Nov. 1, 1777, thanking God for the victory and encouraging colonists to observe a day of prayer and thankfulness while thinking about the cause. The day of Thanksgiving was set for Dec. 18, 1777.
It marked the first Thanksgiving for the colonies after declaring independence.
It’s always worth treating yourselves with love and respect- even if you’re alone.
Happiest delayed holiday to your and yours!
Yep. Nothing to do with funny hats.
[New York, 3 October 1789]
By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington
Nor did the Pilgrims extend a warm invitation to their Indian neighbors. Rather, the Wampanoags showed up unbidden. And it was not simply four or five of them at the table, as we often imagine. Ousamequin, the Massasoit, arrived with perhaps ninety men—more than the entire population of Plymouth. Wampanoag tradition suggests that the group was in fact an army, honoring a mutual-defense pact negotiated the previous spring. They came not to enjoy a multicultural feast but to aid the Pilgrims: hearing repeated gunfire, they assumed that the settlers were under attack. After a long moment of suspicion (the Pilgrims misread almost everything that Indians did as potential aggression), the two peoples recognized one another, in some uneasy way, and spent the next three days together.
…
We falsely remember a Thanksgiving of intercultural harmony. Perhaps we should recall instead how English settlers cheated, abused, killed, and eventually drove Wampanoags into a conflict, known as King Philip’s War, that exploded across the region in 1675 and 1676 and that was one of the most devastating wars in the history of North American settlement. Native soldiers attacked fifty-two towns in New England, destroyed seventeen of them, and killed a substantial portion of the settler population. The region also lost as much as forty per cent of its Native population, who fought on both sides. Confronted by Mohawks to the west, a mixed set of Indian and Colonial foes to the south, and the English to the east, Pumetacom was surrounded on three sides. In the north, the scholar Lisa Brooks argues, Abenaki and other allies continued the struggle for years. In “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War” (Yale), Brooks deepens the story considerably, focussing on indigenous geographical and linguistic knowledge, and tracing the life of Weetamoo, the widow of Wamsutta and the saunkskwa , or female leader, of her tribe, the Pocasset. Weetamoo was Pumetacom’s ally, his relative, and a major figure in the fight. In the end, not only Pumetacom’s head was stuck on a pike; hers was, too, displayed for Wampanoag prisoners who were likely soon to be sold to the Caribbean.
I had forgotten how Addams Family Values depicted the first Thanksgiving…
Elmer Season redux
To be honest - not as grittyrific as usually expected
