A brief history of Thanksgiving

[Matariki]

http://www.ewebtribe.com/NACulture/articles/thanksgiving.html

<snip>
The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England were not
simply refugees who decided to "put their fate in God's
hands" in the "empty wilderness" of North America, as a
generation of Hollywood movies taught us.
...
In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims declared themselves an independent
confederacy, one hundred and forty-three years before
the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent
occurrence of Armegeddon in Europe and hoped to
establish here in the new world the "Kingdom of God"
foretold in the book of Revelation. They diverged from
their Puritan brethren who remained in England only in
that they held little real hope of ever being able to
successfully overthrow the King and Parliament and,
thereby, impose their "Rule of Saints" (strict Puritan
orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they
came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower) but
in a hundred others as well, with every intention of
taking the land away from its native people to build
their prophesied "Holy Kingdom."(3)

[rasputin1952]

1. Many historians also doubt that the first "Thanksgiving Dinner"...

was much more than shell fish easily gathered, lobster, dried cereal grains, and whatever else the local Native Americans could bring together to keep these people from starving.

Too bad the eventual repayment would be blankets inoculated with smallpox, a degree of untold misery for generations to come, destruction of vast swaths of forest and pollution of waterways teeming with fish and other wildlife.

it has been said, that before the Europeans began to colonize North America, that a squirrel could start at the Eastern Seaboard and go to the Mississippi River without touching ground, just jumping form tree to tree. I have some problems w/that scenario, as the Delaware Water Gap is nothing to sneeze at, and a few other waterways are somewhat difficult to picture with trees having 200 foot branch overhangs, but it certainly shows just what we've "accomplished"...now a squirrel has little chance of going 500 yards without being crushed under the wheel of a car...:(

[Matariki]

2. History is an interesting continuum

It affects us profoundly, often without our realizing it.

The crazy fundies who put George in the Whitehouse stand squarely on the shoulders of those crazy fundies who believed that 1666 was *The End Of The World* and had no moral dilemmas over committing genocide.

[rasputin1952]

3. I have found that zealots of any religion/belief system...

are something that should be avoided at all costs. Take these people and their followers that think they can "hurry" the return of Jesus by destroying everything they can. The insanity of the situation is incredible.

Just think for a second, if these people are on the "right track", how could they possibly think that standing before God on Judgment Day would benefit them in any way? How can someone expect platitudes and warmth from a God that said "Love your brother as yourself", and then proceeded to kill, maim and destroy millions/billions of lives? I do not have the desire to be standing in their shoes while they tried to explain that they were willing to destroy the earth and all life upon it...in the name of salvation.