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Long, long ago, hopeful young families left Europe and bravely crossed the sea to their new home in America. Upon reaching the New World the Pilgrims cleared the forest and raised bountiful crops, and their joy was hard to contain for this was the life that they had dreamed of. And then the Indians came out of what was left of the forest and slaughtered the young white families because they had made the mistake of building log cabins and planting zucchini on sacred Indian burial grounds. But the Indians couldn t swing their tomahawks fast enough as wave after wave of wretched refuse invaded their land. The Indians swung their arms mightily but eventually they grew tired and finally dropped to the ground, exhausted and beaten, as hordes of white men become landlord of the land of plenty.

Resigned to their fate of sharing the land with their new Euro Trash neighbors, the Indians and the white man sat down to a roasted turkey dinner one November day (on the white man s calendar) and gave thanks for their new-found friendship. The Pilgrims were understandably a bit more thankful for this friendship than the Indians, because the Indians had agreed to stop making lodge-pole decorations out of the skulls of the strange pale-face families that lived in houses and wore shoes.

This Thanksgiving celebration become a yearly event and evolved into a day that Americans cook stuffed turkeys and then stuff themselves after watching the Detroit Lions get stuffed by some other football team on national television. Ain t history funny that way? Easter started as a Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ but now it s fooling children into thinking a bunny comes to their house and hides candy. Christmas, of course, was a celebration of the birth of the Christ child.

What other big days in the life of Christ might we turn into a holiday? What about the first day toddler Christ learned to walk? We could call it Stepping Day and celebrate by eating a standing rib roast. I like holidays. Most people don t have to work, everybody acts nice, you eat real well and they put good movies on T.V. Let s figure out an excuse to have more holidays. And I hope you re enjoying yours.

Hmm...I like this post. I have to think about it, because I'm not sure how to reply to it yet, but I like it.

heh heh heh.



Taht's why I think we should adopt Muslim holidays. We'll soon have them commercialized like all the others, except that their holidays are more like holiweeks. Instead of a ball game or two, we could have whole tounaments! The Mega-Ramadan Sales could turn our economy around (if you believe the media) or improve our already strong economy (if you believe the media). Of course, we'd put in the occassional mandatory "don't forget the reason for the season" that no one understands anyway.

Reply to Thanksgiving:

The Wampanoag Indians had lived on the land that eventually became Plymouth Colony. The depicted neighborly dinner with the Pilgrims we learned in elementary school was far from that. The Native Peoples knew of the power of these white settlers, and the hard time they were having surviving that first year. The Native religious beliefs taught them to be kind to those in need, and brought the majority of the food to the feast to ensure that the Pilgrims did not starve during the next winter. The Pilgrim’s invitation to the Wampanoag to attend the feast was not in the generous spirit portrayed in history books, but for the Pilgrims to negotiate a treaty with the Wampanoag to secure the Native lands for themselves. This was the beginning of the ceaseless land hunger of the white settlers to displace the Native Americans from their ancestral homes.

posted by wolverine

This Thanksgiving celebration become a yearly event and evolved into a day that Americans cook stuffed turkeys and then stuff themselves after watching the Detroit Lions get stuffed by some other football team on national television. Ain t history funny that way? Easter started as a Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ but now it s fooling children into thinking a bunny comes to their house and hides candy. Christmas, of course, was a celebration of the birth of the Christ child.


Christmas and easter were never christian festivals originally. Easter started as a pagan fertility festival in spring when life was coming back to the land. The easter bunny was actually a hare (rabbits are not native to britain but were introduced by the romans as a food source) and the sight of hares prancing about to impress the females was one of the visible signs spring was coming. Easter egg-another sign of fertility, wasn't just the eggs that got rolled. Christmas is also derived from pagan times, at the start of winter primitive tribes would salaughter the animals they couldn't keep throuigh the winter and have a feast on what they couldn't preserve. The tinsel we now drape on christmas derives from a german practice and came to this country with the Hanoverians and what it used to be was the entrails of the animals being killed draped on the evergreens as a gift to the gods. It was they who also brought in the traditional christmas tree as we now know it. Christmas was brouight forwrad and combined with that othetr pagan festival of sun return-saturnalia of the romans when the winter was over and the days grew longer and you knew you had survived-hence the wild celebration. That's why a lot of the traditional foods at new year and christmas are preserves, black bun, shortbread etc.



they were all hijacked by the early christians at about the same time they decided pagan priestesses were really witches because they couldn't stop people celebrating the change in seasons and trying to stamp out pagan practices just wasn't working. Actually 17th century puritans heartily disapproved of such jollity and banned christmas, dancing and basically anything that was fun. (smile and the devil gets in,)

Christianity like judaism and islam are desert religons and very dour. Christmas is lively and a jolly time because of the pagan influence IMO. I reckon christmas and new year are so popular because instinctively we feel like celebrating because we are still alive. It just feels right

We adopted the christmas turkey from the americans, the producers having all these excess birds set about persuading peole to eat them at christmas as well.

It's bad enough christians claim pagan festivals for their own they could at least remember where christmas and easter came from and remember their heritage.

What about Moral Ethics Day? In honor of the Ten Commandments and doing what's right in our lives.