Thanksgiving – a piece of America that Ireland should embrace

RedBranch,

Thanksgiving used to be the last Thursday in November, but it was moved up to the 4th Thursday in the 1930s by President Roosevelt in a bid to extend the Christmas shopping season and help the depression-hit economy. He never imagined our Christmas shopping season that begins in October.

Thanksgiving is definitely not something that should be celebrated here. Celebrating your ancestors invading a country and murdering the natives is not something to cheer about.

Happy Thanksgiving To all the Fays from the O'Dowds in Pa. We will have 15 here for dinner tomorrow after the HighSchool football game in the morning. Thanksgiving is Christmas without the presents, a no pressure day(except for the cook) to get together with family .

"It was when a bunch of stubborn Protestants learned the hard way how to live in a strange new land and learn from the natives even if they looked, dressed, danced and farmed differently. Providence, their euphemism for the Diety, saw them thru and deserved to be thanked while the blessing were shared" The indigenous peoples had little to be thankful for after they saw the real face of the anglo-puritan psychopaths in future nation mugging slaughters of non-combatants.

LOL ! Thanksgiving and Taxes ~

American Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of the month not the last Thursday. This year November has 5 Thursdays.

American Thanksgiving does have religious overtones--after all who are we giving thanks to? It's a harvest festival (which is why our Canadian bretheren do it a month earlier, shorter growing season). It was when a bunch of stubborn Protestants learned the hard way how to live in a strange new land and learn from the natives even if they looked, dressed, danced and farmed differently. Providence, their euphemism for the Diety, saw them thru and deserved to be thanked while the blessing were shared. If we Yanbks can bring this to the world, maybe the world can forgive us for Bermuda Shorts, KFC, refusing to go metric, talking too loudly and dispoiling good whiskey with 7-Up!

I always thought Thanksgiving was the last Thursday in November, why is it this week? In many ways Christmas is the Irish Thanksgiving. As I understand it Thanksgiving was established to be free of religious connotations. No such need in Ireland, sure we're all Christian, well most of us, at least some of us, anybody, anybody?

Good God, isn't it enough that we have Christmas displays in the shops before Hallowe'en? Do we have to have yet another consumerfest to clutter up the years?

Maybe Thanksgiving has become commercialized and the evening of the day may start the frenzy that is Black Friday but still we give thanks for family, and friends and for what we have even if it isn't much. This holiday truly embraces America where others don't.

A great idea -- but Thanksgiving is past now. It was on Monday the 14th of October here in Canada. With about 14% of Canadians tracing their roots to Ireland I think Irland would do well to join Canada for Thanksgiving. The Americans have their thanksgiving on their own date. Or Ireland can just appoint any date they want but given how Thanksgiving in American is such a commercial frenzy perhaps it would just be better to be kinder to people around us every day of the year and not make a date of it at all.