Say Thanks!

[Madhav Lakkapragada]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Thankyou, Javaranch!

- m

[Jesse Torres]

<h1>Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Eat a lot of good food! </h1>

[Joyce Lee]

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

[Alan Wanwierd]

I never understood "Thanksgiving" - never had the basic premise of the thing explained - Who started it? Why? Whats the big deal? Who are you thanking? and What for? - And whats that got to do with Turkey (Which IMHO is a trad xmas food! )
[ November 24, 2004: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

[Tony Alicea]

Adrian: Don't burn your brain!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! Or None at all.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Adrian Wallace:
I never understood "Thanksgiving" - never had the basic premise of the thing explained

Traditional American Thanksgiving story (I have no interest in debating the veracity of this, it's a story, folks

In 1620, a ship full of British exiles landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in search of a new world where they could practice freedom of religion. Life was hard and they barely survived. Thanks to their hard work, determination, and help from the Native Americans who lived in the area, they had a bountiful harvest of corn and other produce. They had a big celebration to thank God for this bounty, and invited the Native Americans to share it with them. They likely ate turkey and also pheasant and fish which were available in abundance. And that was the first Thanksgiving.

[Pat Davis]

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I guess i have some extra reason to be thankful - just come back from a 7-hour driving in rainy weather......

[Mapraputa Is]

This is the first Thanksgiving I feel like a part of a celebrating crowd rather than an alien.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody.

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Adrian Wallace:
I never understood "Thanksgiving" - never had the basic premise of the thing explained - Who started it? Why? Whats the big deal? Who are you thanking? and What for? - And whats that got to do with Turkey (Which IMHO is a trad xmas food! )

[ November 24, 2004: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

I just watched a History Channel program that explains the history of Thanksgiving. It was brought to the New World by the Europeans. It was known in Europe as The Fall Harvest Festival. It was held as an occasion to give thanks. The festival though dates back to the Greeks. Here is a link.
http://www.twilightbridge.com/hobbies/festivals/thanksgiving/harvest.htm


Turkey wasn't even eaten during the first Thanksgiving.
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/thanksgiving/

More Thanksgiving History:
http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/history.htm

[Warren Dew]

Jesse Torres:

Turkey wasn't even eaten during the first Thanksgiving.
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/thanksgiving/

Interesting link ... but as far as I can tell, it lists "Wild Turkey" as a food that may have been on the menu (with venison and "wild fowl", which may have included turkey, as the only definites)?

(I'm assuming they mean the nonalcoholic "Wild Turkey" here....)
[ November 24, 2004: Message edited by: Warren Dew ]

[Jeroen Wenting]

wild turkey would certainly have been on the diet of early colonists in the northern Americas.
Whether it was on the menu on the first thanksgiving celebration will likely never be known.

[Helen Thomas]

Traditional Christmas fayre will become the Gooducken.
At least the marketeers are hoping it will be.

It's a whole pheasant stuffed into a whole large chicken which are then stuffed into a very large fat goose.Traditionally they were baked whole in a pie and sent off to relatives and friends for Christmas. Enough meat for 30 people.

There may have been a note saying "Good Luck with the Gooducken".

Turkeys are eaten as often as chicken now and so has lost all novelty.
But Christmas Turkey is as expensive as it ever was. �90 for a 10 kg turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving.
[ November 26, 2004: Message edited by: Helen Thomas ]

[Warren Dew]

In the interests of having as authentic a Thanksgiving as possible, I dispensed with the turkey this year and looked for venison at the meat market ... but beef was as close as I could get.

The fact that my wife doesn't care for turkey had nothing to do with it.

I did make some sauce bearnaise. I'm sure the pilgrims would never have eaten their venison without a proper bearnaise, made in a stainless steel double boiler.

[Sudharsan Govindarajan]

Thank you JavaRanch!
Thanks for making my life simpler!


Sudharsan

[Joe King]

Yesterday someone in my office rang up a tech support guy in USA to try to chat about a problem we were having. It took ages for us to realise why no-one seemed to be answering the phones

The thing is that we only hear about American celebrations from watching American programmes, and they are never shown at the right time of year (e.g. we get the Friends christmas special in the middle of summer etc), so unless we look it up we have no idea of when all these celebrations are. Anyway, we eventually got hold of the guy and he seemed a bit grumpy about being taken away from his celebrations... wooops.

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:

Thanks to their hard work, determination, and help from the Native Americans who lived in the area

I wonder if the Native Americans would have helped as much if they had have known what would happen shortly afterwards.....

In 1620, a ship full of British exiles landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts,

A month or so back I was in the English Plymouth looking at a sign on a wall talking about these guys sailing off. It got me thinking - the initial settlers in the Americas had a really bad name-choosing ability. The idea of calling the place they landed after the place they set out from set a bad precedent - now there seem to be hundreds of American towns and cities named after European counterparts, making things most confusing.

Apart from well known ones like Plymouth and York, the really confusing ones are the cities in the states which have grown to be much bigger than the towns they were named after. Speak to people about Newark and Boston and they think of the large cities in the US, not realising that they are named after small towns in the UK. Getting a bit further up the silly scale, I read about a place in the US where they named the town "London" and the river it was on "The Thames". Come on, its not very imaginative is it?

Any one think of other examples? Birmingham is another one, off the top of my head. I suppose Nova Scotia could almost count as well.

[Helen Thomas]

I guess the next lot who set out from Plymouth headed for Plymouth,
Birmingham to Birmingham, London to London etc. etc. and they were able to build communities quicker.

I'm sure the Native Americans now feel they gave too much away.
Check this threadOr maybe they didn't- check my blog later for an update on Native American earlier and latter day heroes.
I bet few if any could name even one.
[ November 26, 2004: Message edited by: Helen Thomas ]