Thanksgiving Awareness Month

Thanksgiving Awareness Month. Because some need to be reminded that there is, in fact, another holiday before we get to Christmas.

We just went to Wal*Mart yesterday, and they had Christmas music playing over the speakers! I don't need to be hearing about a winter wonderland in the middle of Fall. A few days before Halloween, I went to Jo-Ann's to pick up some last-minute Autumn decor and most of it had already been replaced all things red and green.

I'm already sick of Christmas and it's only the beginning of November! Why do stores ignore Thanksgiving and shove Christmas down our throats? I get that there's a lot more money to be made in that holiday, but don't people get annoyed with it? Does it really help increase sales at the end of October?

I can't be the only one who's come to dread the last two months of the year.

The "Holiday Season" just isn't what it use to be.

Buy, Buy, Buy, that new toy for your child, it makes noise, it engages your child's attention, it annoys the living hell out of you and the rest of the adults. Instead of: Think of those who have less then you, give food to those who have little to none this season. Give needed items, not useless junk that will be torn up by the middle of next year. Blankets, sleeping bags, a backpack with a "Camel Bak", a swiss army knife, P38, you know, things that are of use and will last a long time. Needful things, in these dark times. Yes, a teddy bear is nice, but what if that bear had a hidden pocket (even better then just a bear).

That is another thing wrong with this world. Nothing lasts as long as it use to, it breaks down (the sooner the better for the companies who make this crap), all for the almighty money.

The reason they avoid thanksgiving, is because it is not profitable to the corporations. Plain and Simple.
Take the Corps and Co.s Out of the Holiday, spend it with family and try to Unplug and play a board game, card game or other PHYSICAL GAME and not a virtual one.

reply to post by thepixelgarden


Agreed.
The commercial end of xmas has killed the holiday for me.
I used to love the holiday but for a while now, I know what xmas is really about.
It is to sell crap to people that don't need it nor can afford it.
And we for the majority fall for it every year...

reply to post by Skada


Nice list there.
I'll bet your honey has an ATS account and that was your subtle hint?
I hope you have a merry xmas!

I happen to love all holidays. You don't have to spend much at all to make a holiday special. I used to hate when they had Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff all available at the same time, but it does give people more time to shop. It really helps if you are on a budget.

A few years ago, I enjoyed spoiling my family with presents. I admit that I went overboard, but you know... loved seeing their faces light up. Last year we all agreed to get each other 1 present each. It was more important to just spend the day together. This year my 11 year-old son has already stated that he doesn't even want anything for Christmas. Can you imagine a kid saying that?

Skada, you bring up a good point about giving needed items to those who have less than us. I think that's exactly the direction we need to go, and I will talk to my family about donating this year. Thank you so much for the idea!

Originally posted by Night Star
I happen to love all holidays. You don't have to spend much at all to make a holiday special. I used to hate when they had Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff all available at the same time, but it does give people more time to shop. It really helps if you are on a budget.

I agree 100% that you don't have to spend a lot. I guess that's the difference: to the businesses, it's about money and so they put out all the holiday stuff at the same time. To me, it's about enjoying each of the holidays as they come. I tend get into the "Christmas spirit" around early to mid-December... but not before Thanksgiving, and certainly not at the end of October.

Truly what is happening here is that TPTB actually think that there are so few to be thankful this year that there is more money to be made over Christmas because a whole lot of people right now think there is nothing to be thankful for. Thanksgiving centers on Family and Food, and being thankful. To whom? Well it used to be God in this country, but now we just bow our heads for a moment of silence and eat the Turkey. No one cares:
No one can afford the plane tickets to fly home, and they don't like being groped by the TSA. Gas is still $3.50 a gallon, and folks will not travel as far. Besides with states stopping cars and searching for terrorists now they fear the police nearly as much as the the Law breakers...
Grocery stores are moving their products all over the store to try to get people to walk everywhere and hopefully buy more stuff they don't need. It is a marketing ploy and many will fall for it. They figure people will opt for only two of the 3 close holidays.....instead they will observe All Hallows eve [a success for them] and Christmas...

But this year food promises to be very expensive, and by pretty much doing away with Thanksgiving the hope is people will spend what little money is left on toys and other junk that will break in a year or so and fill up the landfills raising the cost of garbage pick up. Many have already eaten the candy from Halloween and thrown away their costumes... Christmas will prove to be much the same.
They will separate you from your money because it is what they covet.

reply to post by thepixelgarden

reply to post by Skada

reply to post by DavidsHope

reply to post by Night Star

reply to post by g146541


that's a great idea !
let's spread more awareness of the real origins of the feasts of thanksgiving

and get it abolished

The Real Thanksgiving

The Real Thanksgiving

Quoted from: The Hidden History of Massachusetts

Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:

"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."

But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.

What Really Happened in Plymouth in 1621?

According to a single-paragraph account in the writings of one Pilgrim, a harvest feast did take place in Plymouth in 1621, probably in mid-October, but the Indians who attended were not even invited. Though it later became known as "Thanksgiving," the Pilgrims never called it that. And amidst the imagery of a picnic of interracial harmony is some of the most terrifying bloodshed in New World history.

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. The Pilgrims invited the Indian sachem Massasoit to their feast, and it was Massasoit, engaging in the tribal tradition of equal sharing, who then invited ninety or more of his Indian brothers and sisters-to the annoyance of the 50 or so ungrateful Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie was served; they likely ate duck or geese and the venison from the 5 deer brought by Massasoit. In fact, most, if notall, of the food was most likely brought and prepared by the Indians, whose 10,000-year familiarity with the cuisine of the region had kept the whites alive up to that point.

The Pilgrims wore no black hats or buckled shoes-these were the silly inventions of artists hundreds of years since that time. These lower-class Englishmen wore brightly colored clothing, with one of their church leaders recording among his possessions "1 paire of greene drawers." Contrary to the fabricated lore of storytellers generations since, no Pilgrims prayed at the meal, and the supposed good cheer and fellowship must have dissipated quickly once the Pilgrims brandished their weaponry in a primitive display of intimidation. 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"...

The Pilgrims of Plymouth, The Original Scalpers

Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local Indians. They were engaged in a ruthless war of extermination against their hosts, even as they falsely posed as friends. Just days before the alleged Thanksgiving love-fest, a company of Pilgrims led by Myles Standish actively sought to chop off the head of a local chief. They deliberately caused a rivalry between two friendly Indians, pitting one against the other in an attempt to obtain "better intelligence and make them both more diligent." An 11-foot-high wall was erected around the entire settlement for the purpose of keeping the Indians out.

Any Indian who came within the vicinity of the Pilgrim settlement was subject to robbery, enslavement, or even murder. The Pilgrims further advertised their evil intentions and white racial hostility, when they mounted five cannons on a hill around their settlement, constructed a platform for artillery, and then organized their soldiers into four companies-all in preparation for the military destruction of their friends the Indians.

Pilgrim Myles Standish eventually got his bloody prize. He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, "as a symbol of white power." Standish had the Indian man's young brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name "Wotowquenange," which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.

In todays society, we celebrate Thanksgiving more as a celebration of apreciatin for all that we have. I shall spend mine with family members with laughter and much love.

reply to post by DerepentLEstranger


Or we could, you know, spread more awareness of the real origins of Christmas.

reply to post by thepixelgarden


I know right? Christmas muzak, the day after Halloween? Really?

Still though, I get it, it's a slow economy, and Christmas is the biggest retail event of the fiscal year, so makes sense they want to stretch it a bit.

I'm actually kind of glad though, as I need to get a new tree and lights this year, and my lights (blue bulbs, white wire) are trickier to find, so gives me more time.

(we do a white tree, with blue lights, and blue, white, and silver ornaments)