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Thanksgiving has always been a fond remembrance of the English pioneers who built what would one day become the United States of America. So I guess it was inevitable, in this postmodern age, that the holiday would come under assault. Here PBS Newshour puts its seal of approval on a "growing movement" that is encouraging elementary school teachers to vilify the early settlers, stressing the diseases they brought and the massacres they committed.
At 33:00, a Colorado teacher tell her kids, "So, are you guys ready to have your minds blown? So if you guys can take one thing away from social studies in 3rd grade, I want you to take away, the Pilgrims overtook the Native Americans and took everything that they had worked so hard for."
Apparently this is the current mainstream liberal view of Thanksgiving.
We don't actually calebrate Thanksgiving in the UK to the same extent the US does and it's not a national holiday here, although it is linked to Harvest Festival and is celebrated as both a religious and a secular festival in parts of Europe.
I think the Germans celebrate it more than we do, they call it Erntedank or Erntedankfest and it's usually in early October rather than November.
Our four day long weekend holiday is at Easter when we have a national holiday on Good Friday and the Easter Weekend including Palm Sunday and Easter Monday.
I would happilt celebrate Thansgiving, as I am always up for a new holiday.
Just maybe it was revenge. The Native American learned about taking scalps from the white folks.
So what? Why do people try to make this about race? Or that the English learned it from the Dutch?
It has to be considered in its context. That was an era of colonialism; people didn't know any better. To the Pilgrims' credit, when they dug up corn on the Cape that first winter, they only took some of it for themselves and only out of necessity. They left the rest for the Indians who had buried it. It is said that the next year, they returned what they had borrowed. The Pilgrims were not bad people and no need to make them out as evil.
I wish the Indian population hadn't been killed off but I don't think that was the intent. The wars and the other settlers from other countries fighting, it didn't end well at all. But don't ruin an American holiday for kids by making the Pilgrims out to be evil people. They were persecuted people who did the best they could to survive.
I don't know what kind of point the OP is trying to make. Maybe that we liberals don't like Thanksgiving? How about going after George Washington or Abe Lincoln while you're at it. No one is perfect and you also have to consider the context of their times, what they had been taught. And to broaden it to the wide generation that all white people are evil or all Europeans are evil is just as inaccurate as worshiping the Pilgrims.
I'm sure the native Americans were really happy to have a wave of undocumented Europeans move onto/into their places and spread disease, then try to wipe them out and claim the land as their own.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not true.
Do you want a Confederate flag to dry your tears?
The spread of diseases is a part of human history, especially with a migratory species such as humans. Further, the aboriginal Americans often engaged in brutal wars with each other, and all the carnage that goes along with that.
Pfffft. The modern Thanksgiving is yet another holiday that requires women spend days cleaning, organizing, shopping, and cooking while men sit around on their butts waiting to be served. And don't even try to deny it. You all know it's true.
They were all greedy white people who took the charity of the Natives living here before raping them, killing them, and stealing their land.
There is nothing pretty about the colonization of North America. It's high time they quit sugar coating it for children.
Thanksgiving is to remind us that the Collective will hold you back and kill you.
If it were not for the Indians, bailing out the settlers, they would have all starved to death, taking care of those that did nothing to help survive.
Wrong. I am probably current mainstream liberal and I am excited about celebrating Thanksgiving.
You might like to think so, but as a lone individual you aren't in any position to define what is mainstream. That's the role of organizations like PBS Newshour. Mainstream liberalism is pretty much whatever they portray it to be.
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Whatever tv program you are talking about, it's just ONE nutcase teacher.
Judy Woodruff says it's a "growing movement". The Colorado teacher was filmed as an illustration of what current right-thinking teachers are doing with Thanksgiving.
Who are these people who seek to vilify everything that we boomers learned as children?
This is not a liberal or conservative issue. This is a fringe group who are insecure about their intellect and constantly need to think up new ideas to shore up their illusion of intellect. They don't mind attacking things that the rest of hold dear, because many of them have multiple national loyalties. This is what Judge Bork called "the chattering class".
Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.
I have researched colonization here for the last 25 years. I will be happy to compare my notes with yours any day.
Most cultures have a harvest festival where they give thanks.
Indeed. No diff in the New World.
No shortage of conflicting documentation romanticizing the event. Huge difference is perceptions between the settlers and native tribes.
During the Civil War, Lincoln used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to happily eat together to overcome the divisions and calm things down. It was good PR. He declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving.
FDR proposed changing the date to the 4th Thursday of November as pro business to create a longer period to sell goods for Christmas- one of endless measures to dig out from under multiple recessions. This turned into a political battle, the traditional last Thursday as proclaimed by Lincoln and supported by Republicans vs the progressive trend towards the 4th Thursday.
Had the internet, social media and forums like this been in existence at the time, no doubt, posters would debate the date, too.
Obviously, the matter became settled business and Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4 th Thursday.
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