How the Grinch (yankee) Stole Thanksgiving
Surviving the Yearly Pilgrim Propaganda
Surviving the Yearly Pilgrim Propaganda
(Dixie Drudge) - In public government run schools every year, our kids are taught that the first civil day of Thanksgiving was declared at Plymouth Colony in 1623 or so, three years after the Massachusetts ‘Pilgrims’ gave up their experiment in communism and starvation, learned how to farm the area from their indigenous neighbors, and actually had something to eat.
What they do not teach is that those stalwart New Englanders hired a ship steered by a captain who couldn’t read a compass and thought they were headed to Virginia. Those pious Puritans subsequently gave the gift of smallpox to their new helpers, then later waged war against the survivors. The Indians who survived the conflict were sold into Caribbean slavery. Yes, no good deed goes unpunished when you deal with the same folk who brought us the Salem Witch Trails. Many places lay better claim to the actual First (European) Thanksgiving on what would become American soil.
So why do we celebrate these Pilgrims every year? Because propaganda and politics always trumps History.
It was routine for voyagers to hold Thanksgiving services after arriving from across the vast expanse of an ocean. The trip was dangerous and could take months. Couple that with the hardship of more than a hundred people crammed into a rickety, leaky ship smaller than a modern mobile home, a box that teemed with seasickness, pestilence and foul smells. People died on the way. Some by suicide. Storms and piracy took their toll. Standing, at last, on dry land was a big deal. The same with overland routes. Getting there was time to celebrate.
In May 1541, Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado, led 1,500 men in a thanksgiving celebration as they camped at Palo Duro Canyon in the modern-day Texas Panhandle, for two weeks rest and recovery. This was more than 75 years before the Massachusetts pilgrims held their illustrious celebration.
On 8 September 1565 Spanish settlers celebrated Thanksgiving at Saint Augustine, Florida when they established the Spanish colony there.
Also, Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate and his large starving expedition, having survived the Chihuahuan Desert held a Mass and feast of Thanksgiving ten days after crossing the Rio Grande on 30 April 1598 near El Paso del Norte. They later followed the river to settle near Santa Fe.
Most English colonies had Thanksgiving services as a requirement in their charters:
Few records survive, but there is no reason to think that the ill-fated Roanoke Colonies did not hold Thanksgiving services after their first arrival in 1585 and before the last colony’s legendary disappearance.
Thanksgiving services were routine in Virginia Colony, the first was probably at Cape Henry in 1607. We do know the first permanent settlement of Jamestown held a thanksgiving service in 1610.
On 4 December 1619, English settlers celebrated Thanksgiving immediately upon landing at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. Their London Company charter specifically required “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God“. This celebration is still held annually at present-day Berkeley Plantation, the home of the Harrison family of Virginia.
Other English colonies followed suit, including Plymouth. No insult intended to New Englanders, but We Southerners were just here first, my own family landing in 1620.
As the colonies declared their independence and war with Britain raged, Thanksgiving proclamations abounded. Sam Adams authored the first official National Proclamation of Thanksgiving issued by the Continental Congress in 1777 at York, Pennsylvania, while the British occupied the provisional capital at Philadelphia.
General George Washington proclaimed a Thanksgiving in December 1777 as a victory celebration honoring the defeat of the British at Saratoga.
The Continental Congress issued several “national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving” from 1774 to 1789. And so it continued. Upon independence, Presidents made numerous Thanksgiving proclamations that were not so much neglected as the dates passed before anyone knew about them because of the era’ lag in communications. The practice eventually fell out of favor.
This changed with invention of the telegraph. The talking wires sang and newspapers set the type. The people knew of the Thanksgiving proclamation for ‘grateful thanks’ to God and a ‘day of national humiliation and prayer’ almost as soon as it was issued. The President who issued it: Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America on 31 October 1861. Other proclamations followed from Davis from 1862 through 1865:
Now, therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, do issue this, my proclamation, setting apart Thursday, the 18th day of September inst., as a day of prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the great mercies vouchsafed to our people… (4 September 1862)
Lincoln joined in the practice, but a little late. More on that later.
Later presidents continued to make Thanksgiving proclamations every year that were largely ignored. In the late 1800’s through to the Great Depression people were just too busy trying to survive to observe a proclaimed holiday. One third of the country lay in ruins. Another third was trying to pioneer themselves despite the hostility and hardships of the Western environment, not to mention with the often lethal objections of the land’s earlier inhabitants. That left only the now wealthy and industrialized North to celebrate and take advantage of what would become a largely commercial holiday. All they needed was a champion. They found it in Sara Josephina Hale of New Hampshire.
Hale was a widow, radical abolitionist, and the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book, the most widely circulated periodical in the U.S. at the time. She had championed the establishment of a permanent national Thanksgiving holiday since before the war. Sara Hale’s badgering was largely behind Lincoln’s reluctant issuance of his national Thanksgiving declaration. Every year, Hale would write letters to politicians and run columns focusing on Thanksgiving as a patriotic, religious holiday. They were oriented toward Northern women and of course, extolled Northern virtues. In particular, Godey’s made heroes of a little-known group of Massachusetts communists and propagandized their virtues. She also took great care to gloss over their sins and together with cartoonist Thomas Nast, is responsible for the squeaky-clean, Disneyesque image of the Plymouth colonists. Sara was quite the propagandist long before anyone knew what propaganda was.
She was also an aspiring social engineer. Hale’s desire was to use Thanksgiving to help establish a National Myth and guide undesirables into assimilation as Good Americans. (aka White New England Protestants) Her idea of undesirables was of course the typical yankee bogeymen, blacks, immigrants, Catholics, and of course, Southerners. She found an army of acolytes in yankee schoolteachers, many who descended upon the South during reconstruction. What was originally a Southern tradition, was now an instrument of yankee propaganda and social evangelism. Naturally there was instant conflict.
Until after WWII, Thanksgiving was largely a Northern event. Southern Democrat towns remained ambivalent to the radical Republican holiday and refrained from participation. Southern governors were openly hostile to the yankee take-over and refused to issue state holiday proclamations. Presidents continued to make Thanksgiving proclamations every year that were largely ignored. Even WWI, barely scratched the resistance.
It was Lincoln who was responsible for the customary date of Thanksgiving (for the next seventy years) as the last Thursday in November. After his assassination, the yankee Lincoln death cult might as well have set it in stone. That date was immutable until the next yankee ‘Dead-in Office’ celebrity took over. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving one week earlier to allow for more holiday shopping time. The Northeastern politicians screamed. They Called the 1939 holiday, ‘Franks-giving.’ However, Roosevelt got the last laugh. In 1941, Congress officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday. Thanks to the efforts of Southern members, congress forsook the Lincoln decree and enshrined Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November each year. Unfortunately, the cartoon Pilgrims came along for the ride.
Also see Brion Mclanahan’s take on the subject