Thanksgiving’s a harvest festival celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday. Known as the yearly traditional family gathering to a large feast involving the turkey as the main dish, we give our thanks and embrace what we have, who we know and the life we live.
How did this tradition ever come to be many may ask, why is it necessary to stuff the turkey out of ourselves, drink the night away and then wake early the next day to shop the holiday bargains of a lifetime. Many dare to keep close a cruel American history that was set afoot on the their land and push aside the pilgrims’ land loving, disease giving, religious to the extent relationship they had towards the natives. The “first” Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth Colony involved a shared banquet amongst the settlers and the natives, the Native Americans in New England were organized into loose tribal confederations, often called nations. Changes drastically made change to the Native American population in the region later on with the settlements of the colonists. The first was “Standish’s raid” on Wessagussett, which frightened Native American leaders to the point where they had to abandon their settlements which resulted a large scale in death of famine and disease. The second, the Pequot War, resulted in the dissolution of its namesake tribe and a major shift in the local power structure. The third, King Philip’s War, had the most dramatic effect on local populations, resulting in the death or displacement of as much as 80% of the total number of Native Americans of southern New England and the enslavement and removal of thousands of Native Americans to the Caribbean and other locales. The Thanksgiving history is just romanticized to a moment before all this occurred that gives some kind of notion to a kind honoring connection the English and the natives would have supposedly had.
Thanksgiving is celebrated throughout North America and has been found to have been cherished in some parts of South America. In America, it’s a federal holiday that falls on a Thursday where many are paid, given that day off and Friday or “Black Friday” off as well. Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000 occuring between the 23rd and the 29th of November. Originally, September 24, 1869 was deemed Black Friday; a day of stock market catastrophe. The history of the day after Thanksgiving being the official start of the holiday shopping season may be linked together with the idea of Santa Claus parades. Parades celebrating Thanksgiving often include an appearance by Santa at the end of the parade, with the idea that ‘Santa has arrived’ or ‘Santa is just around the corner’ so shop while you still can. Black Friday, September 24, 1869, also known as the Fisk/Gould scandal, was a financial panic in the United States caused by two speculators’ efforts to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange and the collapse of the prices in gold In the late summer of 1869, Gould began buying large amounts of gold. This caused prices to rise and stocks to plummet.It was one of several scandals that rocked the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. After Grant realized what had happened, the federal government sold $4 million in gold. On September 20, 1869, Gould and Fisk started hoarding gold, driving the price higher. On September 24 the premium on a gold Double Eagle (representing 0.9675 troy ounce of gold bullion at $20) was 30 percent higher than when Grant took office. But when the government gold hit the market, the premium plummeted within minutes. Investors scrambled to sell their holdings, and many of them, including Corbin, were ruined. Fisk and Gould escaped significant financial harm. Although Grant was not directly involved in the scandal his personal association with Gould and Fisk gave clout to their Wall Street financial gold market swindle. Also, Grant had ordered the Secretary of Treasury to release gold in order to stop the gold market manipulation. Grant had personally declined to listen to Gould’s ambitious plan to corner the gold market, since the scheme was not announced publicly.
Black Friday to this day still associates economically to the consumer playing a huge role in American culture and history despite a recession or a slope in the economy. Thanksgiving and Black Friday compared involve a deep history that involves retaliations later on in relations and scandal.
@supergliderqueen-
This post isn’t a rant and never did I say it was, their indept backgrounds to the festivities of the thanksgiving holiday, I’m not on any side and yeah I never said I was, yeah I accept your opinion on Thanksgiving and Black Friday but do people ever look back and question why traditions ever come to be and how was it ever OK to celebrate them–if that’s what answers your question. Yes, thanksgiving’s celebrated with family and friends and black friday’s a day for savings. What I wrote was just a lookback in history or the truth whether or not you’d rather accept it I don’t know–this wasn’t to offend anybody and in fact many natives and people forbid celebrating these holidays. I only wanted your opinion on the holiday and what I posted.
What Does This Thanksgiving Holiday Week Mean To You? Why Do We Celebrate It, How Was It Ever OK To?
06
Mar
sugar-glider queen
March 6, 2010 at 6:49 pm
how was it ever okay to what? perhaps you forgot what you were asking after your rant. to me thanksgiving is a time to be with family, have a meal together, and be thankful for what we have. -which also involves donating food to those who don’t have much. i see nothing wrong in this to be honest. your rant about black friday doesn’t put things in perspective for me either apparently. black friday is kind of a joke to me. we were gonna go but i have been sick. the only thing i wanted to get anyways were winter coats for the kids $15 vs $40 is pretty good. we got those because someone else grabbed them for us anyways. but there are some people out there who don’t go crazy for stuff. that’s all it is anyways is stuff. so really i don’t know what your purpose was here with your rant about thanksgiving and black friday but you should know there are simple folks out there who like to just be with family and thankful we can be. and i would be the first around here in my family to go off about our horrible history and how America came to be, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a nice relaxing day for family to be together.
edit: sorry if i came off rude. i wasn’t offended or trying to be offensive i just didn’t understand what you were getting at. thanksgiving is a nice holiday in my opinion. but i think most other holidays are just old pagan rituals to be honest. and i kinda hate christmas. especially when my niece comes in saying “i have 9 presents under the tree and my cousins only have 4.” i can’t see why anyone could pull anything negative out of thanksgiving -in response to what you said about it being banned in other places. but i do understand that as America came to be there were a lot of ugly things that happened. thanksgiving seems like the only nice thing that came of it all. and maybe a reminder that no matter how hateful the invaders were the native americans had enough heart to care about them.