Thanksgiving is the only holiday left that we can call it what it is..

[Ripsnort]

It isn't PC to say "Merry Christmas", we've been forced to say "Happy Holidays" because we might offend someone.....

It isn't PC to say "Happy Easter!" because someone might be atheist, or Muslim...or Jewish...

It isn't PC to say "Happy Independence Day" because someone that is Mexican will argue what day Independence day is on....

However we can still say "Happy Thanksgiving" without giving political correctness a second thought, and that makes me warmer than the hot apple cider that I'm sipping (with alittle Tuaca added for flavor )

What has come down in American tradition as the "First Thanksgiving" was actually a harvest festival.  In the spring of 1621, the colonists ripped the soil with primitive tools and began to plant their first crops in Patuxet’s abandoned fields. They had limited success with wheat and barley.  Their corn crop proved very successful, thanks to an Indian named Squanto who taught them how to plant corn in hills, using fish as a fertilizer.  That's where the "Thanks" came in. Thanks to the native Americans for teaching us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Holden McGroin]

Can't call it a holiday...

[BlueJ1]

Im sorry sir. I wish I could agree that Happy Thanksgiving was PC. But I was corrected in school today for wishing my class a Happy Thanksgiving and the teacher decided to go off on a rant about how I shouldnt force my views on others. I just smiled, knowing when each holiday rolls around this year I will wish her the best Valintines/Christmas/ etc etc.

[eagl]

Make sure you find out which holidays your teacher doesn't consider legitimate... Kwanzaa comes to mind...  and bring them up.  There are a bunch of dates of significance to Muslims, and Wiccans have made a living turning the calendar into one big list of special days.  So bring them all up, and make sure to emphasize that it was your teacher's statement that enlightened you to the cultural sensitivity you're displaying by celebrating everyone else's special days.

And wear a bunch of colored ribbons.  If anyone asks what they mean, you're allowed to accuse them of being insensitive and selfish.

[Debonair]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
It isn't PC to say "Merry Christmas", we've been forced to say "Happy Holidays" because we might offend someone.....

It isn't PC to say "Happy Easter!" because someone might be atheist, or Muslim...or Jewish...

It isn't PC to say "Happy Independence Day" because someone that is Mexican will argue what day Independence day is on....

However we can still say "Happy Thanksgiving" without giving political correctness a second thought, and that makes me warmer than the hot apple cider that I'm sipping (with alittle Tuaca added for flavor )

What has come down in American tradition as the "First Thanksgiving" was actually a harvest festival.  In the spring of 1621, the colonists ripped the soil with primitive tools and began to plant their first crops in Patuxet’s abandoned fields. They had limited success with wheat and barley.  Their corn crop proved very successful, thanks to an Indian named Squanto who taught them how to plant corn in hills, using fish as a fertilizer.  That's where the "Thanks" came in. Thanks to the native Americans for teaching us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

"Merry Christmas" "Happy Easter!", etc. all OK if you're talking to a Christian.  If you're not sure who you're talking to...Didn't your momma ever teach you not to talk to strangers?


The original account of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving is 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. Winslow relates the following: "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."

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
It isn't PC to say "Merry Christmas", we've been forced to say "Happy Holidays" because we might offend someone.....

It isn't PC to say "Happy Easter!" because someone might be atheist, or Muslim...or Jewish...

You'd have to be pretty anal to be offended. I'm an atheist... or maybe I'm buddhist... but I respect peoples rights to celebrate their religion (within reason of course).

And lets face it, neither christmas nor easter are originally christian holidays

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by BlueJ1
Im sorry sir. I wish I could agree that Happy Thanksgiving was PC. But I was corrected in school today for wishing my class a Happy Thanksgiving and the teacher decided to go off on a rant about how I shouldnt force my views on others. I just smiled, knowing when each holiday rolls around this year I will wish her the best Valintines/Christmas/ etc etc.

heh one of my sons teachers made the mistake of saying something similar to him once. Then my son told me about it and I in turn went and told the teacher about it. And you know how politically correct I am LOL

Like I said. he did it once

[nirvana]

Ok I will say anything I want and if someone gets offended they can write a letter to the editor.  If i say Merry Christmas to my Jewish friends they say Happy Hannukah back.  It works, it's fine.

[Maverick]

I am almost to the point where I detest the bit about PC. I'm definately not PC. I don't go out of my way to offend someone but anyone telling me I can't wish someone a nice holiday greeting relevent to the holiday at hand I tell them to stuff it. It is my right to speak, it is not their right to tell me not to. I don't FORCE anyone to have a Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday) and I will not tollerate them trying to FORCE me to change my way.

Frankly as far as I am concerned PC can get stuffed and have a big cup of STFU.

[Gunslinger]

Rip here's an anus that would disagree with you:

No Thanks to Thanksgiving
By Robert Jensen, AlterNet
Posted on November 23, 2005, Printed on November 23, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/28584/
One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.  

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.  

That the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.  

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.  

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.  

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.  

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."  

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."

Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."  

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history.

In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who "settled" the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"  

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.  

This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.  

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to "humble our proud nation" and "undermine young people's faith in our country."  

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.  

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact.

Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony. History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.  

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects of the day's mythology on our minds.  

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of, most recently, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005).

[StarOfAfrica2]

Ahhhh, feel the LOVE!!!  

[SunKing]

..Butterball Hallmark holiday..

[Yeager]

that guy that wants all human beings to voluntarily stop procreating is on to something.....

[Hawklore]

It isn't PC to wish a happy thanksgiving..

It's Happy Turkey Day..

Cause thats all it is...

[Monk]

BS!!

"Merry Christmas"
"Happy Easter"
"Happy Thanksgiving"

If ya don't like it - get out of my country or don't talk to me.

Thanks Rip, I feel better now.