Nativity and Thanksgiving

I found a little booklet of Christian Christmas gift idea laying on a table. I think it’s kind of funny, that people make so much money off of religious paraphernalia. If I recall, Jesus had something of a problem with that.

But what I found absolutely hysterical is a book called Why a Manger? It’s description reads, “Drawing from their meticulous research, authors Bodie and Brock Thoene tell the story of the nativity using historical truth to help readers see Christmas in a whole new light.”

Their research must not have been too meticulous, since the contradictions in the Gospels themselves are pretty damning evidence against the story, the total lack of historical corroboration for any of the claims of Matthew’s narrative is just icing on the cake (Matthew’s is the one traditionally told, Luke’s is almost entirely different).

If you’re curious, the good folks over at Debunking Christianity have a good write-up of the evidence against the traditional narrative.

The ridiculous things that people can convince themselves of will never cease to amaze me.

Speaking of traditional narratives, I went to my six-year-old sister’s Thanksgiving “play” today, and part of it was a telling of the Thanksgiving story. What surprised me was how accurate the thing actually is (at least based on my understanding of it, which is from mostly-reliable sources). It really does make a good story.

It’s just too bad that the first relationship between natives and colonists didn’t set the tone for the next three hundred years.

The Year There Were Two Thanksgivings

Ever since Abraham Lincoln had declared it a holiday, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the last Thursday in November. In 1939, that meant the holiday would fall on November 30th.

Or so everyone thought. In August, President Roosevelt announced that Thanksgiving would actually be on the 23rd, one week earlier. His rationale for the move was that the economy, still recovering from the Depression, needed a boost from the holiday shopping season (apparently they had black Friday during the Depression), and 24 days just wasn’t enough time.

As would be expected with such a move, many people were angered. Football fans complained that rivalry games were now on the wrong day. Calendars were now wrong (except for one fortunate company who accidentally scheduled Thanksgiving for the 23rd).

Some of the reactions included saying that the President should “have Sunday changed to Wednesday” or “require everyone to take Friday and Saturday off”. As would be expected with such a bizarre move, the satirists had a field day. Some cartoonists suggested FDR would next make a new month called “Franklinary”, or even run for an unprecedented third term (they got the latter right).

When Thanksgiving rolled around, 23 states celebrated it on the 23rd, 23 others on the 30th, and the remaining two celebrated both. In a move reminiscent of brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War, FDR’s own children celebrated on different days.

The next year Congress passed a law saying that Thanksgiving would fall on the fourth Thursday of November, and it was signed on December 20th, 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor. By then there were vastly more important events in the world, and the year of two Thanksgivings quickly faded from memory.

(Via The History Channel Magazine, A Turkey of a Decision by Rick Beyer.)