Thread:61Storm/@comment-29709319-20181110010804/@comment-29709319-20181122013737

November 22nd: National Cranberry Relish Day, National Day of Mourning, Thanksgiving Day, and Turkey-free Thanksgiving.

🍒National Cranberry Relish Day is believed to have originated in the New England States during the early 1900s, Cranberry Relish is a traditional part of many families Thanksgiving dinner. There are many different recipes and combinations that make up cranberry relish and people have their favorites. The common ingredient, of course, is cranberries. Other ingredients may include apples, oranges, pineapple, sugar, salt, pecans, orange zest, lemon juice and brandy.

🐎🏕National Day of Mourning! The organizers of National Day of Mourning consider Thanksgiving Day as a continued reminder of the democide and suffering of Native American people. Since 1970, participants in the National Day of Mourning have honored Native ancestors and their struggles to survive today. Part of the mission behind the event is to educate Americans about the history of Thanksgiving. Organized by United American Indians of New England (UAINE) during a period of Native American activism, the march has brought about revisions in the depiction of United States history and government and settled relationships with Native American peoples as well as renewed appreciation for their culture. The National Day of Mourning is an annual march and rally organized since 1970 by Native Americans of New England on the fourth Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving in the United States.

🦃Thanksgiving Day! In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth. Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans. In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies. In 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, and the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition. In 1827, the noted magazine editor and prolific writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author, among countless other things, of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. For 36 years, she published numerous editorials and sent scores of letters to governors, senators, presidents and other politicians. Abraham Lincoln finally answered her request in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November, and it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939 when Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plan, known derisively as Franksgiving, was met with passionate opposition, and in 1941 the president reluctantly signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

🚫🦃Turkey Free Thanksgiving! There are several supportive perspectives for the removal of the turkey from the Thanksgiving feast. From the foodie point of view, there are many more scrumptious proteins than the humble gobbler. There is also the vegetarian and the animal rights viewpoints, which are self-explanatory.

Never heard of cranberry relish. Does that mean I'm not traditional!? I'll eat my sisters apple salad in it's place. Yum! I've not heard of this National Day of Mourning annual march and rally put on by Native Americans of New England. These next two are confessing. I can do one without breaking the other one. And I can't survive on apple salad. I got to have my turkey, Please!? Oh wait, I got a reprieve sorta. Our holiday is postponed until Sunday, due to one family member in the hospital and another one sick. (Not me. No sickness in house with baby Oakley coming.) So no turkey!

Let's see...the yogo bug sploot!

Sending turkey-free hugs!🐶💕🍂💕🦃