Talk:Thanksgiving

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[edit] The God paragraph (Neutrality)

There's a paragraph under "traditional celebration" that begins: "The Thanksgiving holiday was established as a national day of giving thanks and praise to God...." and then is followed by an excessive list of citations. Obviously this is the product of a religious person and a secular person arguing over the religious significance of the holiday. It sounds stupid, looks out of place, and reads very badly. it could easily be smoothed out by working something like "While the holiday retains no sanctioned religious significance, it originally included expressions of thanks to God, and many families still give thanks in prayers to this day," into an earlier part of that section. Youdontsmellbad (talk) 08:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Please remove this "Thanksgiving: The Jewish Perspective on Chabad.org " from external link! I dont understand who care about Jewish and Thanksgiving —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.237.7.82 (talk) 21:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the redirect to the Thanksgiving disambiguation page. Since Thanksgiving itself has an article it needs its own talk page, and the disambiguation page as well needs its own. I got rather confused when I clicked to the talk page then clicked back only to find myself in the wrong article suddenly. I don't know of any precedent for redirecting talk pages as this one was. Russeasby 02:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Should it even say in the first sentence that Thanksgiving is a holiday to give thanks to God? I have never heard that before in my life, and though there is a citation of Lincoln's reference to God, this holiday is widely considered to be secular, even by the most religious people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.225.88.146 (talk) 12:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I second the above - as an elementary school teacher and a Christian, we talk about Thanksgiving all the time in school, and never once do we talk about giving thanks to God. We talk about thanks for family, good fortune, etc. I don't think I've ever heard it brought up in church, and about the only religious aspect is we say grace, just like at every meal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.199.128.156 (talk) 13:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The opening sentence reads like it's trying to prove the holiday is a religious one to readers. Furthermore, all three citations are links to statements given by US presidents, not historians. In light of this, I have added a NPOV tag and feel it should remain in place until the introduction is re-written, or more suitable citations are found. Xargon666x6 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Ichormosquito (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
But the sentence says that "Thanksgiving was established ... to God". Since Christianity was the norm at the time, it doesn't seem too big stretch to say the it was that originally, especially given the citations. Isn't it revisionist to say "we don't include God now, so we must pretend he wasn't included then"? 199.71.183.2 (talk) 20:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
That's not what we're saying. The section on Thanksgiving's history gives due weight to God, as far as I can tell. Ichormosquito (talk) 21:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed Icho. "Stretching" already implies a non neutral interpretation. Aceholiday (talk) 10:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

"While the holiday retains no sanctioned religious significance" ??? Thanksgiving is still used as an occasion to "give thanks to God" by many theists. --RucasHost (talk) 14:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a firm believer in seperating religion, and being careful not to INSERT religion where it does not belong. Here I honestly don't see why anyone would think this celebration had nothing to do with god...yes I used the lower case. As stated all participants at the event had a traditional celebration at the end of the harvest....I don't think it's a stretch to propose that they were thankful and therefore giving up worship or praise or what have you TO something/someone. During this time, and with the groups of peoples we are addressing here, religion was exactingly crucial to thier societies. To think that religion played no part in this festivity and that one of the main objectives of the feast was not to celebrate what god had provided, is blantent disregard for key features of native american and early settler societies. Native american tribes had festivals and thanksgiving (to earth/dieties) for almost every successful event in thier lives. While this event would not have been THIER harvest festival, they would have viewed the settlers celebration as the settlers harvest festival, and therefore a religious event. My perspective as a partial Native American. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.43.77.142 (talk) 16:59, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] We do not eat yams

it says yams are a featured ingredient in Thanksgiving - and it links to the African/Polynesian yam (genus Dioscarea) - not only is this crop not at all popular or even really known in America or Canada, it CANNOT be grown here. We do eat SWEET POTATOS (Ipomeoa batatas), which is mentioned, but WE DO NOT EAT YAMS. I am deleting the yams link.

I eat yams on Thanksgiving. I love yams. Why all the yam hatin', dawg? 71.68.15.63 (talk) 04:12, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Americans often refer to sweet potatoes as yams. It is a misnomer that has now become accepted by common usage as an alternate definition and you'll find it in many food dictionaries. I think you're being a bit overzealous here. By all means remove the link to the incorrect entry for yams, but allow the word yam to be linked tosweet potato. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wanderlustlost (talk • contribs) 15:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It gets worse than that: we also eat a sweet tuber that looks like a potato that we call 'sweet potato' but which isn't the sweet potato. (Perhaps the oca?) kwami (talk) 11:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is it 3rd or 4th

Make up your mind, what Thursday is it, 3rd or 4th? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.239.129 (talk) 02:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It is always the 4th Thursday of November. I think sometimes people get confused when there are 5 Thursdays in November. They think, "It was the second-last Thursday in November; that must be the third Thursday." —PurpleRAIN 18:38, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed celebrated the 4th Thursday of November, which means it is no earler than 11/22 (as it is in 2007) & no later than 11/28 (since 11/29 would be the 5th Thursday). If it were celebrated the 3rd Thursday, it could be as early as 11/15.Shkasper (talk) 20:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

In 1941 it was made law to be the fourth thursday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.173.31.96 (talk) 14:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protect?

I noticed last year, and it's starting already this year: As the (U.S.) holiday approaches, a lot more people start viewing this page, and a percentage of them are vandals, which results in a lot more vandalism. I'm sure the page will get semi-protected some time during the next few weeks. Why not be pro-active and do it now, and save a lot of reverting? As soon as Thanksgiving has passed, it can be unprotected again. (The same applies to Thanksgiving (United States).) —Preceding unsigned comment added by PurpleRain (talk • contribs) 14:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Its best to leave it open to editing until an actual problem arises, protecting it now may stop some good faith editors from editing unnecessarily. Russeasby 15:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
How do you define "an actual problem?" There were 35 edits yesterday, of which perhaps 3 were good-faith edits, and the rest were vandalism or reversion of vandalism. I would call that an actual problem. But even if you don't, what is the criteria for semi-protection? Does there need to be a certain number of bad-faith edits in a single day? Prolonged vandalism over the course of several days? A certain number of distinct vandals?
Remember that semi-protection doesn't preclude editing -- it just requires the user to have an account. Good-faith edits can still happen, and are less likely to be reverted accidentally because they're in the midst of 20 bad-faith edits that are reverted en-masse. —PurpleRAIN 16:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I, like you, was simply expressing my opinion. Myself I only like to see articles protected unless absolutely necessary, case of extream edit warring, overwhelming vandalism and such, and even then I prefer to see users blocked rather then articles protected (even semi, anons contribute greatly to WP). Think of the policy of featured article of the day not being protected, even though the vandalism is increadably high, even with the high vandalism, being high profile also encourages some good edits even if they don't seem like much compared to the amount of vandalism. With Thanksgiving approaching this article gets similar attention and among those vandal edits, will be some good anon edits as well. If you wish to see the page protected, then submit a request for it, I wont object. But you asked for input, and I gave my view. Russeasby 16:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. I'm sorry if my previous response sounded confrontational. I was sincerely looking for an answer to what constitutes sufficient vandalism to warrant semi-protection. I wasn't aware that there was an official process for requesting protection -- I'll look into that. Thanks for your polite and patient feedback. —PurpleRAIN 16:55, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
See WP:RFP to request protection. Russeasby 16:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Pie.. It is essential to Thanksgiving. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.224.69.224 (talk) 22:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Provide links to complete texts of Washington's, Adam's, Thanksgiving Proclaimations

I would like to suggest a link offered to the full text of each President's Thanksgiving proclamations. As I read the quotes included in the article, I find myself wanting to read more on the historical perspective of how earlier generations perceived themselves as receipients of God's providence and their resulting reaction of gratitude and thankfulness. Netmer0 20:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That would make for a lot of links and I think a bit too much for this article, however a list could be made in a separate article and linked to from here. I agree it would make an interesting list and worthwhile. I took a look on wikisource and all of the recent proclamations are there, from present and dating back to Carter, but nothing earlier then that which I could find (was surprised that ones made by the founding fathers were not there). What I did find wasn't organized to make finding them easy, so putting such a list together will take some effort by a dedicated wikipedian. Russeasby 21:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sarah Josepha Hale

I was wondering if it is appropriate for Sarah Hale to be mentioned in the effort to get Thanksgiving declared as a permanent American National Holiday? It seems that her role was instrumental in getting Lincoln to make the necessary proclamation. Previous to 1863, she had been waging a campaign to the various State Governors to make similar proclamations. A search of "Thankgiving" in American Memory section of the Library of Congress' website will yield an entry for Sarah Hale that shows her letter to Lincoln and the various articles that she had previously wrote on the subject. I am not sure this link will work, but you can find it here: Sarah J. Hale to Abraham Lincoln Zhafnium 22:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it's worth mentioning... but it's already in Thanksgiving (United States). Is that enough? --Midnightdreary 16:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

There is a blatant contradiction between the line that says "After 1815 there were no more Thanksgiving Proclamations" and all of the rest of the piece with the Lincoln Proclamation and the 1941 law that establishes the fourth Thursday in November as the official Thanksgiving holiday. John F. Kennedy, to name just one, made a Thanksgiving Proclamation. But I see that those of us who wanted the site protected from "vandals" have won out and it is no longer possible to modify even blatant mistakes like this one. I believe wikipedia is sufficiently protected by its very watchful and, in my experience, honest administrators and am personally against such "protection". --Alenux (talk) 15:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The National Thanksgiving Proclamations

This section is long-winded and problematic. After several mentions of "God", "thankful" and "prayerful", the article reads like a church bulletin or Norman Vincent Peale tract. Perhaps this was unintentional or reflects the beliefs/prejudices of the author. But I think the section needs editing--for length but mostly for tone. Any thoughts? Kinkyturnip 04:20, 14 November 2007 (UTC)04:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the length and verbosity of this section, especially in combination with the choice of diction in earlier sections, definitely makes the article read like a religious tract. --Raphite 04:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seasonal Celebration

I believe that the article could use significantly more information on the seasonal relevance of the Thanksgiving traditions. Certain foods are mentioned, but no association is made with celebration of a successful harvest (late-season foods). With the current emphasis on "happy" meals, communal conversation about individual gratitudes, and the implied divine favor upon the European colonists, it seems like the only thing missing is a soundfile playing "God Bless America" and a slideshow of Norman Rockwell paintings. This language certainly deserves a place in the article since it is part of the holiday's tradition, but currently there is no information at all about the seasonal relevance of the Thanksgiving holiday in the context of an intensively agrarian culture. --Raphite 04:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Days off

It says that schools generally give a four day weekend. Well, in my district anyway, it's a five day weekend. So I would just change it to "Four or five day weekend" but it's locked, so I'm just putting this here so someone else can change it. --LittleBeast. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.72.218 (talk) 03:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please clean up United States-First thanksgiving

Under United states - first thanksgiving it says "On November 19, 2007, President George W. Bush gave the traditional Thanksgiving address at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia." this is not relevant to the First American thanksgiving and should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bradleyg5 (talk • contribs) 09:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with Virginia as "First Thanksgiving"

First - As pointed out in the article Thanksgiving was celebrated in what is now known as Canada before the U.S.. Furthermore, the celebration was done in the English Colonies (Of which both the Canada geographic area and the Virginia geographic area was a part of). So "First Thanksgiving" under U.S. is simply wrong on many different degrees. Please fix.

Second - How much importance should be placed on the continuation of an "annual" celebration? A few dinners of thanks does not make a tradition. The fact that the colony was destroyed weakens the claim further. A more accurate article would highlight that a specific number of dinners of thanks had been celebrated in Virginia before it was discontinued (unless the Thanksgiving was continued at Jamestown). To be fair, the article should also highlight other places that also celebrated a few dinners of thanks before discontinuing, or else the article is simply mis-leading. Please either provide the supporting data points of a continuation of Thanksgiving in Virginia, or amend the article.

[edit] Alternative View

This article suggests one of the reasons started to fair better was a change from communal to private farming. The Tragedy of the Commons

Perhaps something along these lines should be mentioned in the article if it can be corroborated with other sources. --Jayson Virissimo (talk) 05:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article should be disputed: Especially in light of revelations expressed here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/21/121940/52 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.145.235.135 (talk) 05:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this section blatantly expresses a POV. Someone was trying to promote capitalism and denigrate communism. It should be edited to reflect the facts only, with neutral language. --Skylights76 (talk) 03:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge(?) Needed

Current articles: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving (United States), Thanksgiving (Canada) Thanksgiving provides a watered-down version of the history of the holiday. All of the information and more may be found in the Thanksgiving (United States) article. The same goes for the canadian holiday. Thanksgiving (Canada) is almost a stub, but it has more information than the Canada section of the Thanksgiving article. These articles need to be consolidated somehow. That could be done by getting rid of Thanksgiving entirely (no pun intended), and turning it into a redirect, or by combining the U.S. and Canadian holidays from Thanksgiving (United States) and Thanksgiving (Canada), and putting them in the one "Thanksgiving" article. 24.128.245.163 (talk) 15:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Agree, having three articles is confusing and unnecessary. I favor turning this page into a simple disambiguation page, and merging all the the relevant content should be merged into the two separate articles. Cogswobbletalk 23:22, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree with the first option. Turn the Thanksgiving article into a disambig, keep the US and Canada articles seperate as the holidays have different origins, dates, and degree of importance within each culture.--Boffob (talk) 13:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed Talk: Thanksgiving (United States)#Merge with Thanksgiving? already had a discussion of this and it also seems to favour the disambig option, it just hasn't been done.--Boffob (talk) 13:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree? There was no clear option presented, so I'm not sure what I'm agreeing with... I was the person who originally split Thanksgiving into Thanksgiving (United States) and Thanksgiving (Canada). At that point, Thanksgiving became a simple disambiguation page. Then somebody suggested having a couple of paragraphs of basic, generic information on that page, which seemed like a good idea. It ballooned from there. I suggest removing all country-specific information from Thanksgiving (except perhaps the dates of U.S. and Canadian Thanksgivings), and making Thanksgiving a "stub"-like article: one or two paragraphs of generic info, with prominent links to the national articles. —PurpleRAIN 15:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Since there seems to be agreement here, I went ahead and removed the U.S.- and Canadian-specific info from the Thanksgiving article, and pointed to the country-specific articles instead. I hope I wasn't too hasty. If anyone thinks I acted rashly, please feel free to revert, and we can discuss further.
I thought about keeping a paragraph for each of the countries, but I realized that was what contributed to the bloat in the first place. There was one paragraph, and people decided to expand on it instead of clicking through to the country-specific article. —PurpleRAIN 16:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Fwiw, I think it looks better now, both this page and the US page. Lejman (talk) 18:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stolen land

Can someone remove the inciteful "stolen land" reference? It currently reads "Thanksgiving has been criticised as celebrating the genocide of Native Americans, in order to make way for European Colonisation. The United States was stolen from the natives who lived there, and with it their culture was almost destroyed." --Norepinephrine (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

When you eat pizza!!! (Duh!)


Turkey with gravy, it is also what thanksgiving meals have!


It's the truth, as offensive as it may be. It would be biased not to put it in. --User:Reapermage1990 (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2007 (GMT)

It's not "the truth". The fact that some criticise it is truth, but North America wasn't "stolen". --99.246.135.97 (talk) 22:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The New World was taken by force from the Indians.--User:Reapermage1990 (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2007 (GMT)

The history of stolen land, genocide, etc., is of course true, and of course it is also true that there may very well be zero people anywhere on the planet whose ancestors did not displace someone else. I am aware that such events may have a special relevance to Thanksgiving since it marks a formative time during the European colonization of North America, but unless criticism of the holiday for this reason reaches a level that is generally noticeable, I don't think it really has a place in this article with its currently limited breadth and length. As the article is expanded, these issues may become more appropriate for inclusion. --Raphite (talk) 02:25, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it is. The article has a strong pro-thanksgiving bias, and nothing of its dark side. Celebrating Americanism, sure. But thanksgiving is nothing to do with thanks to the kind natives for dying for the glorious European pioneers and losing their land. *rolleyes* It at least warrants a tiny mention, so as to not portray the holiday as simply a harmless celebration of US Nationalism. Reapermage1990 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 17:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] criticism

Every year the Nation runs an article about the bloody side of Thanksgiving: giving thanks for victory after massacring the Pequot, etc. I was expecting to see some of that here, or perhaps counter-claims that this is exaggeration, but instead it reads like what I was taught in kindergarten. Certainly the idea of Thanksgiving as at least historically a celebration of conquest is widespread enough to warrant mention? kwami (talk) 11:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

In the section above I suggested that the article is probably not ready for material on imperialism/genocide/etc., but if you could find some good references to articles (journalists, scholarly, etc.) like the one you mentioned, a section on the subject might actually be able to survive an edit war. --Raphite (talk) 21:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Patriotic Mythology

This article reflects the patriotic mythology taught in junior high schools in place of history. It will cause others in the world, who did not attend US junior high school, to question the credibility of Wikipedia and, perhaps unfairly, that of current US historians. It should be removed. --Kjb (talk) 00:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree more. The article looks like a propaganda pamphlet. There is no section like History or anything. Consider this statement:

"This is a tradition that started when the first European settlers arrived in America, in search of freedom." When the fuck did that happen? 1000 BC? And is Thanksgiving a holiday for "search of freedom"? One would think that such a main stream topic (it is nearly everywhere in American Media - movies, TV series) would atleast be readable.--18jahremädchen (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig

This page is really ment to be a disambig page with breif descriptions of the different thanksgivings and links to the corresponding US and Canadian main pages. Yet it keeps growing (and the link to the main US page seems to have been removed at some point from this page). So much has been added though that I certainly dont want to undertake the process of merging the articles now. But I am tempted to return this page to its intended state and allow someone more abitious to go through history and undertake the merger. If no one objects here I will probably be doing this soon. Russeasby (talk) 13:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you! As a Swede who has never been to North America, I know little about thanksgiving, so I don't feel comfortable editing the article. Still, the entire article looks... weird. I'm mostly reacting to the order of how the sections have been placed (and by all means why the sections have been chosen). The introduction seems good enough, but after that... the introduction says it started in Canada... so I expect a history section, or description of Canadian thanksgiving, or, possibly, how Canadian thanksgiving developed into US thanksgiving. But it just starts discussing US thanksgiving. The (long) section 'The National Thanksgiving Proclamations' seems very US focused, making me wonder why isn't it in Thanksgiving (United States) instead. Lejman (talk) 22:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I have just done as you suggested. See my comments in this section above. —PurpleRAIN 16:04, 12 March 2008 (UTC)