Happy Thanksgiving!

Yay.

Happy turkey day Americans. If there are any Canadians, happy belated thanksgiving. To everyone else, happy Thursday.
 
Yeah, condolences to Native American folk. You guys got the rough end of that stick.
 
17th Angel said:
Oh, I see..... Mate, I am not the one celebrating it... See the difference? ;)
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In relationships there is something to celebrate, and often something to not celebrate. Shame on you for getting the two mixed... I'm throwing your tea into the harbor.
 
I'm thankful I can cook a turkey without burning it, and have the opportunity to do so, and share the results with friends. Even if they don't particularly care for turkey. :D

They liked the fruit salad and the pecan pie... ;)
 
greymare said:
pardon my ignorance again, why thanksgiving and why now??????
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It's all part of the American mystique, greymare. Thanksgiving as far as I know is uniquely American, and it goes back to around the Civil War (1860-65) when it was first made official iirc, but it notes a time when some rather ill equipped and ill prepared settlers made their way to America to settle what became the Massachusetts colony. Some local Natives helped them survive the winter, and for that they "gave thanks."

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so well for the Natives just a short while later. Essentially Thanksgiving is the American recognition of the Mayflower Compact and the Massachusetts Charter founding that colony, right around 1620. In the grand tradition of "rugged individualism" we tend to venerate the religious dissidents, the explorer spirits, the lone wolves, and the trail blazers. Perhaps you might recognize that state of mind in another American invention...the Declaration of Independence.

That's not meant as a slight to our good British friends in the Commonwealth at large, it is simply the way things are. Americans tend to walk a bit different path, and we don't mind serving as bulldozer to plow the way for others to follow. It gets us into trouble sometimes, but overall I think the world is generally better off for our particular brand of individualism. Thanksgiving is our way of celebrating that spirit.
 
I gave thanks to God, and to some neighbors and family. Some people in Boston years later gave thanks to the British for their Imperialist use of tax and dirty laws.

Thanksgiving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boston Tea Party - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting version of history 123... do you disagree with Wkipedia? I'll have to find the history book that might agree with you. It appears to me by the history of the Native American Squanto, that he also had thanks to give. Afterall he was sold as a slave in Europe for a time. Some of the gritty truth is that a number of those who came from Europe were seeking what John Smith wrote about, "Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land..." What, were you expecting someone there to give Thanks to England instead of God? Maybe if John Smith had written, "Here every man may serve his masters in English parliament on this New England land." Then maybe a different kind of settler would have arrived and history might have been different.
 
cyberpi said:
do you disagree with Wkipedia?
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Oh no!! Don't anyone disagree with wikipedia!! After all, it is the pinnacle of the font of knowledge produced by western civilization! The cream of the crop! And damn the universities, and damn books!! All the information we need is indexed on a "user-created" encyclopedia on the internet. The epitome of democracy and intelligence!

I'm thankful for wikipedia!!

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
Pathless said:
Oh no!! Don't anyone disagree with wikipedia!! After all, it is the pinnacle of the font of knowledge produced by western civilization! The cream of the crop! And damn the universities, and damn books!! All the information we need is indexed on a "user-created" encyclopedia on the internet. The epitome of democracy and intelligence!

I'm thankful for wikipedia!!

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
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In the USA my friends and family often disagree with each other, the spouse, the kids, the neighbors, the government, the special interest groups, the majority, the minority, wikipedia, the media, the bills, the taxes, the employers, the history books, the professors, the Left, the Right, the religious scholar, Imam, priest, pastor, reverend, etc... and rest assuredly you. It is a tradition here to disagree so shame on you for assuming that my question was rhetorical... Pathless one.
 
Kindest Regards, cyberpi!
cyberpi said:
Interesting version of history 123... do you disagree with Wkipedia? ... It appears to me by the history of the Native American Squanto, that he also had thanks to give. Afterall he was sold as a slave in Europe for a time.
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I read the wiki article, I read the associated articles, including about Squanto. Hard to see where wiki and I are in disagreement, although my presentation is admittedly scanty.

cyberpi said:
Some of the gritty truth is that a number of those who came from Europe were seeking what John Smith wrote about, "Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land..." What, were you expecting someone there to give Thanks to England instead of God? Maybe if John Smith had written, "Here every man may serve his masters in English parliament on this New England land." Then maybe a different kind of settler would have arrived and history might have been different.
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I have no idea what you are talking about. John Smith, et al, including the kidnapper of Squanto, had nothing directly to do with the Plymouth Rock colony and the celebrations of Thanksgiving. Quite the contrary, the Pilgrims were religious dissidents fleeing persecution in England.

"The Anglican Church’s King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant Church’s Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant Christian churches today embrace the King James Bible exclusively as the “only” legitimate English language translation… yet it is not even a Protestant translation! It was printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by authorities who throughout most of history were hostile to Protestants… and killed them. While many Protestants are quick to assign the full blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that even after England broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500’s, the Church of England (The Anglican Church) continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600’s. One famous example of this is John Bunyan, who while in prison for the crime of preaching the Gospel, wrote one of Christian history’s greatest books, Pilgrim’s Progress. Throughout the 1600’s, as the Puritans and the Pilgrims fled the religious persecution of England to cross the Atlantic and start a new free nation in America, they took with them their precious Geneva Bible, and rejected the King’s Bible. America was founded upon the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible." emphasis mine, -jt3

http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

Those same ill-prepared Puritan Pilgrims fleeing the persecution of the Church of England, are the same ones Squanto helped survive that winter in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. Or do you contest recorded history, cyberpi?

How about wiki?, since it seems to be the reference of choice:

"Contemporarily with the English Reformation, the Church of Scotland had been reformed on a Presbyterian model which many Puritans hoped to extend to England. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England, he appointed several known Puritans to powerful positions within the Church of England and checked the rise in power of William Laud. Nevertheless, he was not a Puritan and regarded them with great suspicion, viewing the Puritan movement as potentially dangerous to the royal control of the Church (see High Church). Popular among Puritans, the Geneva Bible had anti-royalist translations and interpolated revolutionary notes. Luther had called for vernacular Bible translations and church services; for the Puritans, who believed in biblical supremacy, having a Bible was of paramount importance."

Puritan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Those same pesky Puritans again...tsk tsk tsk

And to further complicate matters, it was those pesky Pilgrims who held fast to their Geneva Bible that challenged the Bishop's Bible of the CoE and convinced King James to convene the scholarly linguists of the realm to write what we now call the KJV Bible, even though they disagreed with the final product:

"In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St. Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, and proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English. Two years later, he acceded to the throne of England as King James I of England. (He is therefore sometimes known as "James the Sixth and First".)

The Authorized Version was first conceived at the Hampton Court Conference, which the new king convened in January 1604, in response to the problems posed by Puritans in the Millenary Petition. According to an eyewitness account, Dr John Rainolds "moved his majesty that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reign of king Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original." emphasis mine, -jt3

Authorized King James Version - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Once again it seems history is a simple cut and dried slice of ambiguity pie. Nothing is ever as it seems. The Native Americans got reamed for saving the lives of religious dissidents who first championed the cause of the most used English translation of the Christian texts in use today, even though they objected to the final version of that text and would not use it themselves. They became an outgroup with the Royalists and Anglican Church, and found cause and motivation to emigrate to the New World, establishing trade and growing wealthy in the process of becoming an even greater perceived threat to the establishment. It was the establishment that was responsible for the kidnapping and forced servitude of Squanto, as it was the establishment that John Smith, et al, represented, just as it was establishment representatives that introduced the diseases that wiped out Squanto's village during the time of his absence. The question is: what have the KJV Bible, religious persecution and the plight of the Native American in common? Thanksgiving.
 
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cyberpi said:
In the USA my friends and family often disagree with each other, the spouse, the kids, the neighbors, the government, the special interest groups, the majority, the minority, wikipedia, the media, the bills, the taxes, the employers, the history books, the professors, the Left, the Right, the religious scholar, Imam, priest, pastor, reverend, etc... and rest assuredly you. It is a tradition here to disagree so shame on you for assuming that my question was rhetorical... Pathless one.
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Ooooohh, I misread you. My bad.

I'm not ashamed.
 
juantoo3 said:
I read the wiki article, I read the associated articles, including about Squanto. Hard to see where wiki and I are in disagreement, although my presentation is admittedly scanty.
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Where does wiki say that Thanksgiving is our way of celebrating a spirit of individualism... namely our particular brand? Your original words:

juantoo3 said:
It gets us into trouble sometimes, but overall I think the world is generally better off for our particular brand of individualism. Thanksgiving is our way of celebrating that spirit.
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Where has anyone thought of Thanksgiving as celebrating your brand of individualism?!

juantoo3 said:
I have no idea what you are talking about. John Smith, et al, including the kidnapper of Squanto, had nothing directly to do with the Plymouth Rock colony and the celebrations of Thanksgiving. Quite the contrary, the Pilgrims were religious dissidents fleeing persecution in England.
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Was Plymouth rock the first or only place where anyone had Thanksgiving? Not according to the history I read. Do you believe that Thanksgiving was to give thanks to the Indians?

John Smith wrote books which, along with other propaganda I'm sure, attracted a freedom seeking class of people to come to the Americas. If Thanksgiving has become your celebration of individualism, then surely you won't mind that I also included the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which Thanks was given to England. I tend to celebrate 'our' brand of individualism, or independence, on another holiday in July... but maybe you celebrate that on Thanksgiving.

juantoo3 said:
Those same ill-prepared Puritan Pilgrims fleeing the persecution of the Church of England, are the same ones Squanto helped survive that winter in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. Or do you contest recorded history, cyberpi?
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Yes, I contest your version. I read in the history book that at the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia that there was a Thanksgiving festivity three years before the Pilgrims. The Mayflower arrived in November 1620. I read that Squanto first met the Pilgrims in spring of 1621, which led to a treaty with Sachem Massasoit. Squanto and others showed them how to manure the ground with hearing. The first Pilgrim Thanksgiving was in the Fall of 1621, celebrating the plentiful harvest.

juantoo3 said:
The question is: what have the KJV Bible, religious persecution and the plight of the Native American in common? Thanksgiving.
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Your favored outlook upon God and of history?

Here is the account I find of the Pilgrim event, in a letter from Edward Winslow in Plymouth, dated Dec 21st 1621, to George Morton in England. It was printed in Mourt's Relation, London, 1662:
Edward Winslow said:
"We set last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas. According to the manner of the Indians we manured our ground with herrings (alewives) which we have in great abundance and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase in Indian corn. Our barley did indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering. We feared they were too late sown. They came up very well and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together, after we had gathered in the fruits of our labors. They four in one day killed as many fowl as with little help besides, served the Company for almost a week, at which time, amongst our recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their great king the Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. They went out and killed five deer, which they brought in to the Plantation, and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. Although it not always be so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. -- We have found the Indians very faithful in their Covenant of Peace with us; very loving and ready to pleasure us. Some of us have been fifty miles into the country by land with them. -- There is now great peace amongst us; and we, for our parts, walk as peaceably and safely in the woods here as in the highways in England. - I never in my life remember a more seasonable year than we have enjoyed. -- If we have but once kine, horses and sheep, I make no question but men might live as contented here, as in any part of the world. -- The country wanteth only industrious men to employ, for it would grieve your hearts to see so many miles together with goodly rivers uninhabited, and withall to consider those parts of the world wherein you live to be seven greatly burdened with abundance of people."
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So it seems the Pilgrims had a harvest feast, and gave Thanks to God, and to neighbor. Is that not correct? Many people give thanks for a year of good harvest, and I suggest that the whole thing is the exact opposite of individualism.
 
Habla Espan'ole ?

It seem that the English settlers were beaten to the punch by about 55 years when their Spanish brothers and sisters celebrated feasts with the natives in Florida of all places. I like the prof's line about his being called "the grinch that stole thanksgiving" by his genteel New England colleagues.

flow....:rolleyes:

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/apnews/stories/112602/D7NHQDKG0.html
 
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