Thanksgiving Hypocrisy

- by Stephen Lendman
11/16/07

In the US, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November to give thanks for the year's blessings and bounty. At least that's how it began. It's not, however, the current practice. Most people defile the day's spirit in how they spend it over a full four day holiday weekend - with overindulgent eating, parades, "can't miss" football from Thursday through Sunday, and, key for merchants, the "official" start of the Christmas holiday shopping season. It begins Thanksgiving Friday, is now an orgy of holiday consumerism, continues through Christmas eve, ebbs for a day, then builds again for a final celebratory new year's welcome with more overindulgent eating, drinking, partying, and binge-shopping for nonessentials.

This holiday, like all others, is also replete with myths, and young minds are filled with them. They're taught the Pilgrims invited Native Indians to share their bounty in a show of brotherhood and friendship with an array of foods early settlers never heard of that were indigenous to the Americas and introduced to them by Native peoples. The Pilgrims had nothing to do with this tradition. It began with Eastern Indians observing fall harvest celebrations centuries before the first settlers arrived. After they did, there was no such observance as "Thanksgiving."…

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