Art Gallery III

[BugHunter]

still kinda fits

[daft alchemist]

My guess it's the anti-Valentine's holiday created by bitter singles who really just wnated to be loved on V-day. My guess is that I'm also right in guessing that.

[Cobra5]

Wow.

[BugHunter]

deep. I so couldn't figure that out by myself. Somebody get her a sandwich, she totally deserves it.

[Jalathas]

daftalchemist said:

My guess it's the anti-Valentine's holiday created by bitter singles who really just wnated to be loved on V-day. My guess is that I'm also right in guessing that.

Not really. I consider it more of a holiday for those for whom Valentines day was just another Wednesday. There's no bitterness here.

[daft alchemist]

I'm not saying you're bitter. I'm just saying that's probably the origin of it.

Kind of like how Native Americans made an anti-thanksgiving holiday since the pilgrims killed so many of their people. That's a worthy cause though, I'd say.

[Tassatul]

Ehhhh. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks (hello?) not about what the Pilgrims did to the Indians. People need to grow up.

[BugHunter]

well put.

[daft alchemist]

Well, I'm thinking that to full-blooded Native Americans, it's not a day for giving thanks of any sort, m'kay? I forget what they call that day...something like day of mourning or something...I forget.

[Cobra5]

Right.

Well.

...right...

...i like thanksgiving...

[Tassatul]

You're missing my point, though. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks, and being happy about the things in life that are going well. Exploiting and murdering Native Americans 3 and 4 hundred years ago is not what we are celebrating when we sit down for a plate of turkey, and so once again, while killing the Indians was wrong and bad, it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving.

[daft alchemist]

Look, I have nothing agains the commercialization of holidays. Easter is about a bunnies and colored eggs, halloween is about costumes and candy, and christmas is about a fat man in a red suit spoiling little kids. But the fact that the pilgrims sat down and made up a holiday after murdering indians and taking their food and their supplies just doesn't sit well with me. Especially since you go to school and learn how the indians helped the pilgrims and they were buddies and all that junk that's really nice to believe, but totally not the truth.

I'm not saying I'm against thanksgiving. I'm all for any holiday that gives me an excuse to eat pumpkin pie.

[Cobra5]

Thanksgiving.

Was.

Not.

Made.

By.

Pilgrims.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth."

Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863.

That was when our modern Thanksgiving holiday came about. During the civil war, created by Abraham Lincoln, to give thanks that despite we may kill eachother, and we may have evil among us, we persevere, and continue to prosper.

On top of this.

The idea of "Thanksgiving" as it is, but before the contemporary holiday existed, was a holiday among all nations, including the native Americans. Practically every culture in the world had a harvest festival, now remember, this was a time when all food came from agriculture, and how much people got to eat depended year-to-year on the harvest, even in fully industrialized nations.

The story of "the first thanksgiving" as it is told today, having taken place between Indians and pilgrims, or somehow being a product of that time period, comes from when Squanto taught the pilgrims how to survive in the New World. The pilgrim's European crops and practices failed wholly in the new world, and Squanto- who spoke English, as he once served as a slave in Europe, and thus knew fully the treachery of "the White Man"- taught them proper methods and also gave them crops to allow them to survive (crops which quickly spread back to Europe, and are now seen over the whole world including potatoes, tomatoes, and corn). Again- the celebration between the native Americans and the Pilgrims is in no way related to modern thanksgiving, other then the popularization of the story of "the First Thanksgiving", which is largely a commercial practice (and, as you said above in exact words, you have nothing against the commercialization of holidays). The idea of pilgrims or indians being involved in thanksgiving is similar, I suppose, to rabbits or eggs being involved in Easter, but that's a story I don't know.

A festival to give thanks to their respective Gods or powers for their year's harvest already existed in both cultures. That year they held their festivals together with eachother, though no part of this celebration was at the time marked as any special holiday like modern thanksgiving.

Before this, even. Spanish explorers in (what is now) Texas held a celebration to rest and give thanks for their survival. This one was called thanksgiving and a lot of people point it out as being the actual "first thanksgiving" (though whether or not that's true, I don't know). Indians were not involved in that celebration at all.



In addition. There is no native American holiday on thanksgiving to mourn for their ancestors. That was made up by Jeffery Rowland, the same guy who popularized "Snakes on a Plane", in his web comic "Overcompensating". Some Native Americans do hold special remembrances or have some mourning practices, but they are all individual. As a culture, or as any particular native American culture, there are no special practices, and certainly no "National Mourning Day" (As Jeffery Rowland put it).

If there is such a thing, it is certainly well hidden from us white men, as I have never heard a word about it.

[Cobra5]

After a search there is a group who calls their remembrance "National Day of Mourning".

But, still, it is an individual thing (despite having "national" in its name) and isn't recognized by the native American community at large (or America at large, for that matter).

They travel to Plymouth rock, and give speeches and stuff. It was started in 1970 by a native American activist but it is now attended by many minority groups (including, for example, blacks and gays).

The only time it really appeared in the mainstream was in 1997, it became violent and the police had to break it up.

So I guess it wasn't really made up by Jeffery Rowland, the idea of "National Day of Mourning", but the idea its held by native Americans across the country, or that all native Americans mourn on thanksgiving, is false.

[daft alchemist]

I'm not saying they all do. They sure have reason to. I feel bad for what happened to them. My Comp & Lit 2 prof openly admitted to being a white-basher though he himself was a white man. He had one of those shirts that shows native americans with their fighting gear and whatever rifles they found that calls them the original anti-terrorism group. It's just hurtful to me. The junk they spew at you when you're a child to make you think things are happy and good, and then you grow up and learn that Lincoln didn't actually mean to free the slaves and all those good things. Completely ruining role models, or at least it did for me with good ole' Abe. But oh well.