"Fake" history.........

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, lets talk turkey, well, I guess we should talk lobster since that was on the menu and tryptophan-packed turkey was not.

For Americans, the fourth Thursday of November is a day celebrated with too much food, too much football, and a dessert full of lies.

First a little nugget of info.  When you read the definition of the word pilgrim, you will find that it is a person or people who journey to a sacred place for religious reasons.  While it is true many people from "the old world" did flee to North America for religious reasons and to escape the king, they were actually Puritans and Separatists but for the sake of this blog post, I will continue to use the term pilgrim as that is what they taught us in school, and I do not want to confuse anyone. These people were 100% altruistic.  In fact, they basically annihilated the Native Americans and stole their land because they wanted it.  A good definition of this would be genocide.  I am guessing you did not learn that fact in school either.

In school, they teach this holiday as being a positive exchange between the pilgrims and the Native Americans sharing a feast.  The week leading up to Thanksgiving, children make paper turkeys, fashion headbands out of feathers, make wreaths out of corn shucks, and making Pilgrim hats out of Oreo cookies (psst...The pilgrims did not wear those stupid black hats in the illustrations that we have all seen a million times, they did not wear buckled shoes either).  Sounds like fun but what they do not teach in school is the fact that the Pilgrims and Native Americans were in a constant war with each other.  Who knew?

For some reason, Americans take pride in sugar-coating the truth for unsuspecting children.  Columbus is another fine example of this dumbing down of American school kids.  We are lead to believe that Columbus discovered America, but did he? (Read this blog post if you want to know).  And, please do not even get me started on the whole Santa Claus charade, just don't!

I know, you are probably thinking what is the harm in editing the truth, well, everything!  I personally do not want to breed ignorance and with all the whitewashing of true history, that is exactly what is happening.  The true history of Thanksgiving is not the heart-warming tale in textbooks but rather a hypocritical holiday.  I am not trying to rock the Mayflower but the pilgrims and Native Americans were not working side-by-side planting corn as school books suggest.  Just letting you know.

A few more random facts.

Factoids:
~The native people around the Plymouth Colony had lived there over 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived.
~The natives that were not killed were sold into slavery and sent back to the old world.
~Did you hear the story of how the pilgrims literally set the natives on fire while they were sleeping?
~The first "real" Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1541 in Texas when Franscisco Vasquez de Coronado and his crew held the celebration in Palo Duro Canyon.
~Baby turkeys are called poults.
~Domestic turkeys cannot fly.
~Can you believe turkey fossils have been found across the US dating back 5 million years?
~Jingle Bells composed in 1857 was originally a Thanksgiving song.
~The first Thanksgiving football game was in 1876.
~America was not the first stop on the pilgrim voyage.  They moved from England to Holland and when that did not work out, they sailed to America.
~Oceanus Hopkins is the only baby born on the Mayflower.  He only lived to be 6 years old unfortunately.
~By the end of the harsh winter, almost half of the pilgrims died.  The bodies were buried at night so the natives would not figure out the number of pilgrims was quickly dwindling.
~The drink of choice for the passengers of the Mayflower was beer, and they brought plenty with them.