Happy Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and while we tend to trace it back to the Pilgrams, it is really, officially of a more recent origin.

But, that said, out in Madison, WI, award-winning filmmaker Patty Loew has put forward the case that the first celebrants were really "grave robbers." Per the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times, that is the case.

I got there from the Ann Althouse blog.

Let us grant that Ms Loew, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, is correct. Does that negate our need to give thanks? Not at all.

Besides, the first Thanksgiving celebration was in St Augustine Florida, on 8 September 1565. That would make it Spanish and before the Pilgrams or European fishermen off the coast of New England.

In 1863 then President Abraham Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving for the final Thursday of November. Thus it proceeded, with some modifications in the 1930s, until 1941, when the US Congress pegged the holiday at the fourth Thursday of the month.

The point of the day is that few of us have made it as far as we have without building upon what our families before us have done, and our local community and our state and our nation. We may attribute this in part or in whole to our God or to those who went before us, but in any case we have stood on the shoulders of giants and Thanksgiving is the day to recognize that and to be thankful.

I think the original reference to Giants is from Bernard of Chartres, circa 1130:
"We are like dwarfs standing upon the shoulders of giants, and so able to see more and see farther than the ancients."

Regards -- Cliff

Incidently, someone has been hacking into the Wikipedia page on the US Thanksgiving, defacing it. From the history tab this has been going on for several days. It is now back up, but a couple of minutes ago it was down.