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Anyone who knows me knows I am not BIG on holidays.
Most holidays that claim religious roots, like Christmas and Easter, all have pagan origins that inadvertently serve to celebrate the winter solstice and springtime (rebirth). Although Thanksgiving is not necessarily a religious holiday, it does have pagan origins. The ancient Greeks honored their goddess of corn; Demeter at the festival of corn was honored at the festival of Thesmosphoria held each autumn. In ancient Greece, in honor of the goddess who taught mankind to tend the soil a similar festival was held, during a month known as Pyanopsion, late October into mid-November. The Druids celebrated the Green Man by offering libations to trees with ciders, wines, and herbs. Wiccans celebrate the aging goddess as she passes from Mother (fall) to Crone (winter) and prepares for death and rebirth. The ancient Romans celebrated a harvest festival called Cerelia, which honored Ceres their goddess of corn (from which the word cereal comes). The festival was held each year on Oct. 4 and had some similarities to our own Thanksgiving. There were offerings of the first harvest and included parades and sports. Ceres, for those who do not know, in Roman mythology is the goddess of grain and is the daughter of Saturn and Ops. As it seems Thanksgiving has many ties to agriculture—and rightly so, since there were no convenience foods or grocery stores to feed hungry bellies. But, here in the United States, however, the Thanksgiving festival of honoring and giving thanks for a bountiful harvest has a quite a different origin. Not to put a damper on anybody’s “turkey day,” but the truth of the matter is in the United States Thanksgiving is marred by blood—blood of Native Americans. The first settlers struggled to survive in a new and harsh environment, and the friendly Native American tribe Wampanoag Indians helped them. (What I wouldn’t do to have a time machine and warn the Wampanoag of the evil that was about to come 16 years later.) In 1637 Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop thanked the Native Americans for their hospitality by ordering the massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. The next 200 years were marked by other massacres, stealing of land, smallpox, blankets, and the Trail of Tears. It was Abraham Lincoln who decreed Thanksgiving Day to a legal national holiday during the Civil War. Ironically, he declared this on the same day he ordered troops to march against the Sioux in Minnesota. As you sit down this Thanksgiving with loved ones to enjoy a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, take a moment of silence and atone for past atrocities while giving thanks to the Great Spirit. Remember, if the lessons of history are not learned, they will surely repeat themselves as we have seen time and time again. Peace
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