In the 1630s just a dozen winters or so from the arrival of the Mayflower and only a few years after the arrival of Christian Zealots known as Puritans, the real mass butchering began. In 1637 Europeans forces cornered 700 Natives mostly women and children at the mouth of the Mystic river. They shot and beat to death the men and burned everyone else in longhouse fires. It was this Mystic River massacre along with 2 other large massacres that had Richard Bellingham the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declare it a Thanksgiving. Much later, it was George Washington who finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Of course they didnt label them as massacres, they saw them as god assisted triumphs. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving Day to a legal national holiday. Lincoln needed a brotherly mythology as in his war, it actually was a matter of brother against brother and the Natives North of and West of the Union could threaten to create a new front. It was from Lincoln that a mythology became historized. FDR would later establish the fixed date of the next to the last Thursday in November for Thanksgiving mainly for commercials interest as it was considered inappropriate to advertise products for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. This gave everyone an assured long weekend to sell. Yes even back then people put up xmas lights and decorations months before Christmas. It is the largest capitalist holiday you know. It is not that mythologies are bad its just that they are not true and when it comes to history we have a duty to uphold the truth including the bad and the ugly.(R Dawson )
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 17:29:39 +0000
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