Franksgiving

Next Thursday is Franksgiving. What is Franksgiving?

The first Thanksgiving Day was actually declared by Massachusetts Governor William Bradford on July 30, 1623 (World Book). Since 1836, Thanksgiving Day had been celebrated on the last Thursday of the month. Before Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of 1863, different states and communities celebrated Thanksgiving on various days, but the tradition of celebrating it on the last Thursday of the November goes all the way back to George Washington. In 1939, FDR declared the second to last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving Day. Why the change? He thought that it would be good for the economy to increase the number of Christmas shopping days (as if somehow you couldn’t Christmas shop before Thanksgiving). This commercialistic ploy was rejected by Americans, and in 1941 Congress established the fourth Thursday of the month to be the nationally recognized holiday.

But this is still a disgusting compromise, just as is combining Abraham Lincoln’s and George Washington’s birthdays. What if Congress changed the day that Christmas is to be celebrated? What if the President declared Independence Day to be the fifth of May to combine it with Cinco de Mayo celebrations? Would you go along with that? Just because the President, the Congress, or some bureaucratic government agency declares something to be so, that doesn’t mean that it’s true and doesn’t mean that you have recognize it to be true or go along with it. If the government starts issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples (actually they already have), then are those couples really married? If the Supreme Court or Congress declares blacks or the unborn to be nonpersons, does that mean that they are not human beings?

Though there are many older American Thanksgiving traditions which you could regard, one way you can show your opposition to manipulative government this year is by celebrating Thanksgiving Day on the 29th, not the 22nd. If you live in Canada, you can show your defiance of your corrupt government by celebrating Thanksgiving on the last Monday in October instead of the second Monday in October.

Be thankful that you still have the right to dissent in this way. We are losing this right piece by piece.