Saturday, November 25, 2006

Thanksgiving Redux

Sarah over at Orcinus put up a Thanksgiving post over at Orcinus, entitled "The Great North American Holiday".

She starts by correctly stating that a core belief of the religious right is that God somehow established America for a special destiny or purpose in the history of humankind -- that we are in some way uniquely blessed. It is understood that Thanksgiving somehow is reaffirming acknowledgment of God's blessing

Actually, this idea has been around a long time and is seen in the early versions of our imperial dream known as "Manifest Destiny" -- which could be snarked to, "If it ain't nailed down, it belongs to me".

However, assuming that the Christianist belief was in fact correct, is it not obvious how terrible such a blessing would be?

Supposedly, the first people to be blessed/chosen in this manner by the Eternal to fulfill a manifest destiny brought forth a fellow known as Messiah, Savior and Prince of Peace.

If we, in fact, were blessed on the same order of magnitude, what then is it that America would bring forth?

I shudder at the thought of saying it right out loud, but would it not be a sort of antiparticle?

Fortunately, Sarah, in the rest of her article pretty well much dismantles not only the idea that the Plymouth Thanksgiving was the first, but also that it was in some way unique. There have been quite a few Thanksgivings and Thanksgiving traditions in North America.

So, if we could ignore the possible problem of self-fulfilling prophecy, everything should be just fine!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the natives were far more thankful for the blankets than the virii hiding within them.

Equally, I'm sure the original occupiers had the same idea Shrub and his generals have now; the fucking savages don't know when they're being offered a wonderful saving grace - back then, Christianity as sledgehammer; now, Christianity as a culturally superior sledgehammer.

Too bad both offers were lies hiding the bloody flag of conquest.

Chuck Cliff said...

There are a lot of footnotes to that story James. There were a lot of different kinds of folk among the European immigrants.

It's not entirely clear why King Phillip decided to try to push the Europeans out in 1675, but the massacre of the Pequots in 1637 led by by Cpt. John Mason didn't leave him with positive feelings. In any case the attempt failed and it was a shedwater in more ways than one.

In defeating King Phillip, other things were set in motion which prepared the colonialists for the war against England a century later.