[modi123_1]

Is the Canadian Thanksgiving the usual time to sample the summer's maple syrup harvest, or is that under the full orange harvest moon at the end of October?

[Craig328]

What I can't understand, given how astute Canadians show themselves to be most of the time, is why they've never even attempted to put together sports and Thanksgiving Day like we do down here. By Thanksgiving it's hockey season again so I have no idea why they don't schedule all the good Canadian rivalry games on that day and then have Hockey Night in Canada run it as a midday special event.

Don Cherry, turkey and hockey...all sponsored by Molson Canadian. Good Lord, ya'll so miss the bus sometimes.

[DarenR]

the real thanksgiving: http://www.danielnpa...anksgiving.html would have directly linked but its not working for me sorry..

[lordofduct]

The Pilgrim thanksgiving is a myth.

The real thanksgiving individually and independently cropped up all over the place.

The real thanksgiving actually had little to do with the Pilgrims, and it's only that the Pilgrims also had something similar to what is today called Thanksgiving that we decided to create the mythology of Thanksgiving.

The myth, just like most myths, is not true. We all know the truth of what happened, and it's an embarassment just like a large portion of American history. But to destroy the idea of Thanksgiving over that, something that in design is meant to remind us NOT to be douche bags.... yeah, that's why I'm pro-thanksgiving.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 07 October 2011 - 01:05 PM

[DarenR]

I read somewhere that the modern day thanksgiving in the US was actually a celebration of the signing of the declaration of independence. If I can find that I'll post it.

[lordofduct]

o_O


I've only heard tale of the mythos of the Charter Oak w/ Thanksgiving in my home state of Connecticut. But even that isn't mainstream and mostly through family story telling... Charter Oak is a majour myth in my area of CT. Never heard no declaration of independence connection though.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 07 October 2011 - 01:13 PM

[Craig328]

I recall that Hidden History book from my American history courses in university.

I seem to recall it was factual in some instances but in many it was pretty much a hatchet job on the holiday via very selective cherry picking of contemporary accounts. Like for instance this apparent contradiction:

Quote

The Pilgrim crop had failed miserably that year, but the agricultural expertise of the Indians had produced twenty acres of corn, without which the Pilgrims would have surely perished. The Indians often brought food to the Pilgrims, who came from England ridiculously unprepared to survive and hence relied almost exclusively on handouts from the overly generous Indians-thus making the Pilgrims the western hemisphere's first class of welfare recipients...

What's more, the Pilgrims consumed a good deal of home brew. In fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people's "notorious sin," which included their "drunkenness and uncleanliness" and rampant "sodomy"...

This passage stuck in my mind over the years as it was one which my history prof at the time used as an example that a more skeptical reading of the book was in order. Hard to make home brew and be "daily inebriated" to the tune of "at least a half gallon of beer a day" per Pilgrim...when your crops had failed and you were near starvation. Home brew doesn't simply fall out of the sky. It kinda requires some kind of fermentable grain or fruit or something with sugar (alcohol, of course, arising from the process of yeast on sugars in a heated mash solution).

Short point: if you're starving you're not taking comestibles and making home grog from them...you're eating them. Alcohol production is nearly always a hallmark of agricultural prosperity even back to ancient times.