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   M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 11:13:39 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

   The genocide of indigenous Americans was evil.

   During difficult times, the principle of choosing a day of thanksgiving rather than one of mourning – of looking forwards and choosing hope rather than backwards and choosing despair – is good.

   Thanksgiving isn't necessarily religious. It's not really nationalistic. Thanksgivings were celebrated long before Columbus, and the US holiday wasn't formalized until Lincoln did so with reference to ending slavery.

   I love #Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I have left; all the others have been ruined. Please let me celebrate Thanksgiving.

   • Kit Rhett Aultman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 11:13:38 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

     in reply to

     In the U.S., Thanksgiving wasn't a national holiday until Lincoln proclaimed it so during the Civil War, and it had NOTHING to do with Pilgrims and EVERYTHING to do with courageously expending privilege to free the oppressed.

     Here's what Lincoln thought we should be thankful for; it still applies today:
     - The U.S. democracy surviving another year despite "unfriendly designs from abroad"
     - "[V]ictories over the enemy, who is of our own household"
     - Good health
     - A growing free population due to "emancipation and... immigration"
     - "[T]he labor of our workingmen... [receiving] abundant rewards"
     -and-
     - That "our minds and hearts ] were still filled] with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity."

     This is the Thanksgiving I'll celebrate: that we're still kicking ass against seditionists and traitors, fighting for the oppressed, and adhering as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity.
     https://www.minimumcomp.com/p/thanksgiving-2023-abraham-lincoln#details

     Kit Rhett Aultman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 11:14:33 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

     in reply to

     P.S.: Thanksgiving from 1864 on was SO MUCH about the North kicking Confederate ass in the service of freedom (not pilgrims and crap) that most Southerners didn't celebrate Thanksgiving at all -- until college football became more popular, and Southerners suddenly decided that game day was worth celebrating, and Americans unified around a common narrative. Really. And then of course we had to revise the narrative away from the Civil War to something everyone could share: pretending our nation wasn't predicated on genocide!

     Maybe we shouldn't have turned Thanksgiving from a day celebrating the battle for civil rights into a Lost Cause fable.

     Maybe we should reclaim the damn holiday by realizing it isn't about Pilgrims at all, and make it be about promoting justice and defeating fascism again.