Now that you’re done eating, you can know the truth about Thanksgiving

Hey it’s Rich Dale.  I guess most of us are pretty sure we know the history of Thanksgiving.  Or do we?  According this old article from the Washington Post, there’s a lot of misinformation that’s gotten handed down through the years.  I guess that’s how people are — they sort of change things to make a story that feels good.  And often that’s no problem.

Thanksgiving is probably one of those times.  According to the article, a lot of the specifics we take for granted are not really the way it happened.  There was indeed some kind of feast between Pilgrims and native Americans in the early 1600’s.  But there was not a feast every year starting then to celebrate it.  It actually wasn’t until 1863 that Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official holiday.  And in 1939, Roosevelt moved it to the third Thursday instead of the fourth, but people hated that so much that he changed it back to the fourth Thursday a couple years later.

But really, specifics aside, I would say what really matters is people taking the time out every year to hang out with family and actually be thankful for stuff!  And whether you’re religious or not, you can be thankful for things and say that out loud once a year.

Among other things, I’m thankful for Underdog who stopped Simon Bar Sinister from going back in time and screwing up the “first” Thanksgiving.  That’s why he has a balloon in the parade, right?

(I would have linked to the Underdog episode, but it contains a lot of now-offensive native American stereotypes.  A lot of them.)