Well, it was founded in order to try to mitigate the national tensions that were leading inevitably to the civil war or something like it. Lincoln wasn't really ever pretending it was anything else, I don't think.

It was never really intended to celebrate something real and specific, is what I'm saying here, it's more one of those holidays in the "huh, haven't had a holiday in a while" category. The associated traditions were more or less pulled out of a hat to give the whole thing some coherence, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that. It's the same way Christmas and Labor Day work.

Happy Thanksgiving all you Farkers!

Facts be damned - I love my "traditional" Thanksgiving Day meal and that's what I'm gonna cook, by golly, and this article can just shut its whore mouth

fark the traditional Thanksgiving. We're going to a casino. Spending the day with the natives.

Hmmm, I wonder if the Indian restaurant is open for lunch...

There are a whole host of things we do as part of our culture that have roots in things that are unsavory or seemingly unrelated. It doesn't matter.

What we do now is of the utmost importance. What people did 200 years ago doesn't matter at all.

Enjoy your turkey and watch the game!

The Pilgrims didn't dress in nothing but black and white, indeed they pretty much never wore black and white, their clothes were brightly colored and each garment would be a different color, so pants one color, coat another color, shirt another color, socks another color.

Who cares.
Enjoy your farkin' T-day

Especially redneck halftime performers

Happy Late Thanksgiving to all our southern neighbours, eh!

Let's hear it for Alton Brown and his brine method of doing a turkey! Next step - bird in oven at 500 degrees for 30 minutes then 325 degrees for (mumble) hours.

All i want to know is if the Pilgrims used mini-marshmallows on the sweet potatoes.

dofus: Let's hear it for Alton Brown and his brine method of doing a turkey! Next step - bird in oven at 500 degrees for 30 minutes then 325 degrees for (mumble) hours.

Amen, brother! Though I'm using a different brine recipe this year. That man has done more good for my cooking than any other TV personality.

/Christopher Kimble is close

It turns out that I still sleep well getting a four-day weekend on the merits of "utter bullshiat".

I am going to assume the "article" written by the "author" was fairly commonly know facts. I stopped reading after he/she put the seventh inning stretch in quotes like it isn't a real thing.

A holiday doesn't have to go all the way back to the colonial times to be traditional. It is all relative, just have a good time eating (or drinking) too much, watching TV and trying to avoid that creepy relative you only see once a year.

Hey there Subby, let me tell you about Jesus and Christmas...

hippos do not fart through their mouths

List completely fails without paying respect to the first Thanksgiving being held at Berkley Plantation on Dec. 4, 1619.

"Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

Getting fitshaced on pumpkin wine can never be bullshiat.

McManus_brothers: ChubbyTiger: dofus: Let's hear it for Alton Brown and his brine method of doing a turkey! Next step - bird in oven at 500 degrees for 30 minutes then 325 degrees for (mumble) hours.

Amen, brother! Though I'm using a different brine recipe this year. That man has done more good for my cooking than any other TV personality.

/Christopher Kimble is close

I'm using a recipe from the latest Cook's illustrated - brining and braising. We'll see how it turns out.

Let us know how it goes. Their recipes are usually great.

Wow. I bet the author is fun at parties. "what are you saying, You want us to stop? Why don't you go occupy another family's table"

"Up until the 17th century, Thanksgiving had deeper religious roots and was meant to be more of a time of personal reflection and meditation..."

..um...what?

Made the stuffed acorn squash (4 of them) last night. Just need to heat and serve today.

Looking forward to being rolled home from my parents' house in a wheelbarrow.

The elders raise a hue and cry and call forth Goodman Richard Romero!

Had I but known that "journalism" was such a lazy way to make money, I'd have gone into it.

"and then there's this ass hole!"

These guys will tell you all about it.

Not really sure I understand the propensity of people to nay-say every holiday by regurgitating the same, worn out "That's not how it really happened" BS.

Who cares? It's become a tradition no matter the origins. Get over yourselves.

pffft. Everyone knows that Santa, Jesus and the Easter Bunny were in attendance at the first Day-Before-Black-Friday Eat-a-thon.

/Stupid Flanders

Savage Belief: Not really sure I understand the propensity of people to nay-say every holiday by regurgitating the same, worn out "That's not how it really happened" BS.

Who cares? It's become a tradition no matter the origins. Get over yourselves.

Exactly! So what? The traditions who raised you may not be your biological traditions. But theyve cared about you for decades when your real traditions dumped you. Sure its ok to seek out your biological traditions if youre curious, but at the end of the day you should come back to the ones that raised you because theyre the ones that actually care.

YOU set at home eating cold McDonald's french fries if you want to, buzzkillmitter.
I'm going to be thankful and enjoy the day!
Thank you, Lord!

Made the pecan pie last night. I will be giving thanks with close friends, thankful that I am not spending time with my family, thankful that Fark has kept me laughing while dealing with some godawful shiat over the last 18 months, thankful that though I don't have much-the bills are paid, the cats are healthy and it's a beautiful sunny day today.

Mourt's Relation is actually pretty good reading. It's a journal by one of the pilgrims about how they got through the first winter by robbing the graves of the recently plague-dead indians.

http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html

//sorry for the cut/paste, but I'm through with scripts.

The worst Thanksgiving dinner I ever had was at my mother's house. My then-fiance and I flew in from CA - it was our first holiday together as a family. My mother set a loaf pan on the table that was filled with pre-cooked turkey roll and congealed gravy. Naturally, there was the canned cranberry sauce, glopped out on a plate with the can indentations still evident.

She was a great woman but the world's worst cook.

TV dinners were invented by the US military in WWII. Link (new window)

Everyone living today has always seen it celebrated the same way, so yeah, that's how it is.

Made this for a Photoshop contest long ago, but it seems appropriate:

Find the 6 anachronisms in this "First Thanksgiving"

Quck, Subby! To the Romeromobile!

This is an article that gets put up in one form or another every year. The people who get worked up and offended by articles like these are wasting their time, unless anger is an annual tradition for them as well.

Yes, turkey isn't all that great for you, is potentially fatal for your pets (guys, do NOT feed turkey to your dogs, please, seriously, no I don't care how many years you've done it for--just stop), and isn't what makes you sleepy. Yes, canned pumpkin isn't really pumpkin. Yes, basting is stupid and stuffing is evil.

Wait, dammit, I'm confusing this with Good Eats again.

All of our holidays are badges of our own collective ignorance, it's true, and deep down we get it. But we like the traditions and the excuses to do things with friends and family. You want to hear about crazy traditions? Look into the 500 different reasons Japan comes up with to throw a parade or light some fireworks.

So yes, everything we do at Christmas is pagan, Columbus Day celebrates a white supremacist who died thinking this was India, Thanksgiving is all marketing, Independence Day is two days late, and Easter is about making babies.

But I have a grill and dammit when else am I going to use it?

Even if the basis of Thanksgiving is a lie, it doesn't make roast turkey, stuffing, baked sweet potatoes, green bean casserole with fried onion crunchies on top, cranberry sauce, fresh-baked dinner rolls, and PUMPKIN PIE WITH COOL WHIP TOPPING any less delicious.

In approximately three hours, I will enter a voluntarily-induced temporary coma initiated by ingesting a frightening amount of food. THAT is no lie.

Ya'll forgot the most important thanksgiving tradition!
alicie's resteraunt

Also that Cool Whip topping? It's not actually made from cream.

Well Duh!

FredaDeStilleto: The worst Thanksgiving dinner I ever had was at my mother's house. My then-fiance and I flew in from CA - it was our first holiday together as a family. My mother set a loaf pan on the table that was filled with pre-cooked turkey roll and congealed gravy. Naturally, there was the canned cranberry sauce, glopped out on a plate with the can indentations still evident.

She was a great woman but the world's worst cook.

My worst Thanksgiving was with my previous girlfriend's. Said girlfriend, over the course of our relationship, developed a series of debillitating yet undefinable "illnesses." Modern medecine could find nothing wrong with her, because doctors are in league with corporations whose goal is to wipe out the middle and lower class (figure that one out). So, she went to a bunch of quacks, who were more than happy to prescribe $100 bottles of miracle powders and liquids and other placebos.
Anyhow, she decided that the macrobiotic diet was the thing for her and, unfortunately, me, because if I really cared about her, I would eat the same crap.
Her family got into it as well, except for the father who was often late coming home, probably because he was eating supper in a resto before heading home.
Long story short: Thanksgiving supper was burdock salad and other macrobiotic shiat. No alcohol, because alcohol was devil food. Meawhile, the gf's mother expounded on how couples should only have one child, even though she herself had 3, but that was okay because they were "good" people.

Most of our tradition is bunk, just look at Christmas! That doesn't mean it's not fun, but it's all a Victorian-Romantic farce. Those guys really screwed the pooch when it came to history.

Happy celebration of the genocide of indigenous peoples day!

/I keed, I keed..
//or do I?
///gonna shutup and go stuff my fat face now....

And my xhrismaramahannukwanzakahdanmas traditions are not bunk, cap'n!

I hang reindeer testicles from the evergreen and celebrate the rebirth of the green man just like my forefathers.