Fucking American heroes. They might as well be in Iraq.
Thanksgiving means nothing. Not even, "Thanksgiving is stupid", or "Thanksgiving used to mean something". Thanksgiving means nothing at all, and it meant even less than that until Macy's bought it in 1924. Since then, we have all had a reason to gain consciousness on the last Thursday of November, and up until that point in time the day would have been better used as a full work day. At least then something other than asinine rituals that further materialistic ends and immense personal greed would come out of it.
Thanksgiving is a twenty-four hour window into vacuous needs and vapid solutions for those needs. Thanksgiving is a tailgate party to Christmas, hanging out in the parking lot of the arena, passing out beers to sixteen-year-olds, promising them a great time at Christmas, but hey, let's chill for a bit, listen to my stories about seeing the Scorpions in '88. Thanksgiving should be abolished, as it truly serves no purpose.
But keep the parade. I love the balloons, and David Alan Grier's commentary, and figuring out who's lip syncing and who's trying to keep from passing out due to exposure. I especially like how every year they stroll out a Native American-themed float, just as a way of saying, "hey, water under the bridge, white people". If they made the parade a full twenty-four hours long and called that Thanksgiving, I would fully support it. The parade represents a sense of unity and camaraderie between Americans as we celebrate walking down the street in the cold. That's what this day is really about; turning up your collar, facing the icy winds that herald winter's approach and saying, "fuck yes". The pilgrims can suck a high hard one.
I mean, does anyone ever stop and think about what we're all being commanded to celebrate by big-box retailers and our own federal government? White douchebags sailing to someone else's country, forcing their religious beliefs down the throats of the locals, and deciding then and there that this was a day to be remembered. You know, when you say it out loud, like really spit it into your Grandpa's face, Thanksgiving makes you feel like an asshole for celebrating it.
Plus, in what way is that event significant to our history, or to that of the world at large? We have about as much in common with the pilgrims as we do with Leif Ericsson or Christopher Columbus, two people who did exactly what the pilgrims did, albeit centuries before and with much greater success. Why are we supposed to get the whole family together to celebrate a group of people who failed collectively in their only historic enterprise? Fuck the pilgrims.
Lastly, there seems to be a minority of Americans who find spiritual significance in Thanksgiving, saying that because the pilgrims were of puritan-protestant faith, the day should be a commemoration of God helping his followers find a new home. That's a load of shit-dick, because the writings that catalog the events of the First Thanksgiving don't appear until 1850, a scant nineteen years after Abraham Lincoln decided God liked us enough for us to have a pre-Christmas in November. No, really. So Lincoln just so happened to pick a day of significance to the Christian God, thus sealing our nation's allegiance to a bronze-age education for centuries to come. Great job, beardo.
Mourt's Relation is the only publication of the era that could possibly have included an honest account of the First Thanksgiving, except it was written by a man who didn't live in Plymouth colony at the time, and was only ever affiliated with Thanksgiving in 1841, so no dice there either.
Thanksgiving has no meaning whatsoever, except as a free day off to watch the awesomest thing ever forever on television. Though I suppose by the measure of our time, that's more than enough to consider Thanksgiving a religious holiday.
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