Thanksgiving is not a Christian holiday in the USA
 

In fact it is a secular observance of the generosity that the Native Americans showed to the Puritans who were starvin'. Thanks to the Natives they survived and proceeded to do their best to wipe their benefactors out. Shameful acts that our country has yet to atone for and to make amends.:o

Bet if they could go back and redo things, they'd let the bastards starve! :)

Oh, we'd have -- eventually -- screwed this place up ourselves.

You know where the bulk of that whole "Constitution thing" came from, right? :D

Not a religious holiday, not a political holiday. And as a nation we show some grace. My favorite holiday. The turkey is good too.

If the holiday did not exist and if a democratic congress raised the idea of it and tried to create it what would have happened?

Algonquins, Mohawks, Cherokees-if IIRC, the Sioux weren't consulted;). I could be all wet as we started with the Chardonnay and I'm eyeing that bottle of Jim Beam right now.:D

The Iroquois Confederacy. And, yes, the Amerindian people had their share of problems like hunting the horse and the mammoth to extinction but they had a cultural reverence for nature that's totally missing in white Eurocentric cultures.

John

Was there a mammoth version of the bison?

White eurocentric culture very much had a cultural reverence for nature at 3000 or 4000 BC, e.g. cave paintings. The institution of law and the advancement of agriculture killed it.

Yes, there was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Bison

There is also a European species, the wisent, that still exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison

Then there's a Canadian subspecies of bison called the wood bison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Bison

Both it and the wisent are larger than the American plains bison.

John

Those Giant Bison would have inspired a crap your pants moment in anyone meeting up with one suddenly!

You're right and I knew I'd made a mistake after I posted. I think, however, that the rise of agriculture and later of cities (law) aren't what changed things. There were civilizations that practiced agriculture and had laws, even a written language that still revered and attempted to preserve nature because they literally worshiped it. The Mayans are a good example.

No, it wasn't Europeans or Eurocentrism that did it. It was monotheism. The great monotheistic Abrahamic religions pretty thoroughly wiped out all the other advanced animist and pagan religions and replaced them with a big sky god that told the people that the earth was theirs to do with as they pleased. What ultimately happened to the earth was of secondary importance because the only real purpose of their lives here was to be as obedient to the sky god as they possibly could in order to join the party up there when it was all over here.

John

They were only a foot or so taller than the plains bison but they weighed twice as much. And then there were the horns!

That didn't stop Paleoindian hunters from taking them on. Did you see the atlatl point in that vertibra? The atlatl was a spear throwing stick with a socketed end into which the butt end of the spear was fitted. It effectively made your arm about 50% longer so that you could get a lot more force behind the throw. It was still a close range weapon so those ancient hunters needed to get right in there close to get a kill.

Amazing!

http://www.sd4history.com/Unit1/images/iceagebison.gif

John

Filet mignon as big as a dinner plate! :D No growth hormones and not geezed up on antibiotics. That was a nice pic of the spearpoint stuck in the vertebra. Haven't they found the same in mastodon?

Then again, there were Great Lakes tribes that just fished (like mine). :)

France & England?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

There are some folks who maintain part was European. :D

Another wiki with regard to American history that white-eyes should know;).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_Confederacy

They gave Thanks - to Budda? and invited their friends.

Part of their thanks was undoubtably for their new friends, assuming the story was true.

Today, not so much, the giving Thanks part.

Pete

FWIW, virtually every country has some sort of Thanksgiving or harvest fest. For example, the Germans have Erntedankfest (Ernte = harvest, dank = thanks, fest = fest). They don't surround it with all the gauzy pseudo-wonderfulness that characterizes many of our holidays. Sometimes I think we've subcontracted out all our holidays to Madison Ave. and Hallmark.

Whoop! There it is!

Beat me to it JJ. One of the best lines I have seen for awhile.

Regards,

D-Ray