I am weary after many years slogging in the trenches, drafted to serve in a war I didn’t want to fight. Every year, in December, we’re called to go over the top and assault the Christmas redoubt in our bloody war on the name — never mind that we never actually do, preferring to sit back and sip our wine and enjoy a feast instead, it’s the thought that we’re expected to clamber over barbed wire to somehow force people to say “Happy Holidays”. It’s tiring. And the truth is, I don’t really give a damn. It’s just the fucking Christians wanting to pretend to be persecuted again.
And now, this silly escalation.
OK, which of my fellow Lefties was asking for this? Was it you? I didn’t hear a word about this until Trump suddenly started whining about how we’re attacking him. Come on, people! We’ve got to be coordinated about these attacks!
Again, I don’t really care. I don’t celebrate a bunch of long-dead Europeans feasting at the onset of their invasion of a new continent, I just like the day off, visiting with my kids, and seeing my students recharging with their friends and families before the conclusion of a semester. If that’s the War on Thanksgiving, I guess I’m a combatant. Once more.
They better not try to declare a War on Halloween, though. We have the witches on our side in that one.
So he accuses the “radical left” of trying to change the name of Thanksgiving, but he doesn’t specify the name the “radical left (TM) (C)” want to change it too? Do you remember the good old days when Crazy Racist President Grandpa used to finish his stories?
Oh yeah, me either.
Trump is doing his usual distraction behaviors. I’m a Democrat, liberal woman’s libber , and I’m even a Christian and I’ve never heard of any of the nonsense tRump is currently spouting . He’s an idiot
I usually come over to pharygula when my fundie co religionists get on my last nerve with the sexist behavior and pseudoscience. I tend to agree with 99% of what PZ says. Because he’s not an idiot ( which is appreciated)
It’s actually Trump’s war on straw men.
@ Sonja, # 3: You’re exactly right!
I confess, PZ. It was me. Sorry for jumping the gun before your spider army was ready.
Actually, the ones who keep trying to change the names of holidays are…the fundie xians.
There really is a War on Easter by fundie xians.
They hate the world Easter because the holiday is a Pagan one, named after the Germanic goddess of spring and fertility, Eostre.
They keep trying to call Easter, Resurrection Sunday.
One year the local fundies posted white cardboard lawn signs everywhere about Resurrection Sunday.
They looked really tacky and fortunately, they never did it again.
As a Pagan I don’t have a problem with Pagan holidays such as Xmas and Easter at all.
There has been a War on Halloween by the fundies for decades.
Fundies don’t have holidays, they have Wars on Holidays.
They lost that war as usual but have won some battles.
Decades ago, they managed to kick Halloween out of the local public schools.
It’s now a Harvest Festival if they do anything.
OTOH, the public schools also ended up tossing Xmas and Easter out of the public schools as well as xian religious celebrations.
These are now Year End Holidays and Spring Holiday or some such.
How stupid do people have to be to actually believe this?
I suspect this is in response to a few humorous face book memes from my more activist friends who say things like “We should call it Thankstaking; amiright?”
It was not a serious suggestion.
How stupid do people have to be to actually believe this?
Have you seen those people wandering around, muttering to themselves, and wearing a red baseball cap, made in China, with MAGA written on it?
That stupid.
Actually, if you can get past its genocidal origins (which should be taught truthfully to children, leaving out the happy-face fairy tale), Thanksgiving is one of the rather good things that America has produced.
A day for being grateful for what you have, especially for the important people in your life? A good counter to the rest of the year, in which greed and self-interest are supposed to be our prevailing goals.
After all, the name is rather neutral: it’s not called “Day for giving thanks for our successful genocide of the native population.” Just, be thankful for what you have.
The name “Columbus Day”, however, needs to go. I suppose that’ll be the next name that Trump proclaims is vital to save from our war on it.
Woozy, me thinks you give too much credit to Trump’s rant writers in searching for and finding anything relating to renaming Thanksgiving. It’s purely a fabricated story to tickle the outrage bone among the deplorables.
You can always find somebody who objects to Thanksgiving (or anything, for that matter). Here’s a guy named Robert Jensen who has posted two articles on Alternet.
Thanksgiving? No, thanks.
Here’s why we shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
And here’s something from the Huffington Post that’s not as radical, but still is making Thanksgiving a time for reflection on past sins.
6 Things Every Non-Native Should Do On Thanksgiving.
Hey, wait! Stop it right there!!!
I want to know when they changed the name of Turkey Day into something silly like Thanksgiving!!!! I admit I am thankful for all the brave secularists – nontheists and theists alike – who risked, and too often, gave their lives to get religion out of the government. But we already have an atheist holiday, the Fourth of July, when we celebrate our the creation of the world’s first legally atheist nation under the godless Constitution. We don’t need another atheist holiday!
Turkey Day celebrates the tradition of eating bland meat from a bird but with tasty dressing and spicy cranberry sauce, along with delicious vegetable dishes. Keep your damn, dirty paws off our Turkey Day! Sheeesh. The next thing you know, they’re going to change the name of the Winter Solstice holiday to some silly man-god name, like Voodoomass or Thormass or Heraklesmass. Is there no end to the folly of all of these leftists?
It’s Time to Put the Christ Back In Thankschristing!
Fox was triggered by a Huffpost article about the carbon footprint of Thanksgiving, according to https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-cooks-up-war-on-thanksgiving-for-its-viewers-to-gobble-up/. Then the CT somehow morphed into renaming the holiday.
#8 Nemo,
Very few actually believe this in the sense of thinking it is true. Most just see it, as it is meant to be seen, as a tribal signal.
@13 yes, and a Professor Silverman has also written about it on the History network/Alternet. The “War on Thanksgiving amounts to a few thoughtful articles asking people to think about the historical reality of Thanksgiving, the mythology that has coalesced about it in the last 150 years, and the symbolism associated with it which is damaging to Native Americans. The Right hate any examination of the myths that support “Exceptional” America and its neoconservative economy and society.
Parker Malloy was documenting this myth being created in real time on Twitter. There was a Huffpo article on “how to reduce the carbon footprint of your Thanksgiving feast” which included some mild suggestions about locally sourcing food, etc. Fox seized on it last week and started running a series of pieces about how “liberals” were trying to destroy Thanksgiving. Then of course President NumbNuts since he does nothing but watch Fox and drool, spread that lie during his deranged public episode, which gives Fox juice to keep reporting it as if it’s fact.
I saw someone point out that he probably got the Thanksgiving thing mixed up with people changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. He is senile.
How about we propose to call it PreChristmas?
The mildly deranged penguin, in her position as Supreme Generalissimo for Entirety of All the Multiverses, mandates, orders, requires, and decrees the day be called… ah… (sorry, hard to read the scribbles)… Thors— no, Turke— no, Chees— er, no (surprisingly), Spid— er… well, something day. Probably with cheese, MUSHROOMS!, cheese, vin, cheese, and, er, ah, moar cheese… (Turkeys not included.)
My Thanksgiving is ruined by the news the MST3k reboot just got canceled. That’s my favorite Thanksgiving thing ever. Well at least there’s a couple streaming sites that 24hr the old show tomorrow.
Many many years ago a coworker from a country that does not celebrate Thanksgiving innocently mentioned the upcoming “Day of the Turkey.” I loved the imagery it evoked, of giant, mutant turkeys lumbering through cities wreaking havoc (a reality we’re rapidly approaching what with turkeys so misshapen and breast-heavy they can no longer mate naturally). I have called it that ever since. This also makes the ads for El Rey’s “Way of the Turkey” marathon of bad martial arts movies particularly funny to me.
“Woozy, me thinks you give too much credit to Trump’s rant writers in searching for and finding anything relating to renaming Thanksgiving. It’s purely a fabricated story to tickle the outrage bone among the deplorables.”
Upon reading the story, you are right. I’m not sure why I keep getting surprised by lack of logic.
Trump is no taking credit for a centenial being 100 years. It couldn’t be 89 or 97 years because the Obama presidency didn’t know how to get stuff done. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/centennial-coins-trump-struggles-how-time-works
What Ouabache said at 20. Fits with turning “forest management” into chasing chipmunks with brooms, and all the other times he’s half remembered something and embarrassed himself resynthesizing.
I won’t call it evidence of senility, though I do think he is senile and it could be a symptom, because it’s also a symptom of being a stupid asshole: I’ve seen it in twenty five year olds who’ll presumably lead long bs-producive lives with no progression of symptoms.
It’s also common among the few of his base I know, and authoritarians I’ve known previously, but so are a host of cognitive impairments.
I thought Turkey Day is when your estranged NATO partner commemorates a national history of colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
To be utterly generous, maybe he was wondering why it hadn’t been scheduled earlier. I mean, it isn’t completely nonsensical for Congress and Obama to have legislated that a centennial coin be scheduled to be minted in 2020, even though Obama wouldn’t be president then.
Here’s the U. S. Mint’s Commemorative Coin Programs. The individual page usually references the law that legislated that it be scheduled to be minted.
• Boy’s Town Centennial (December 12, 2017) — signed into law July 6, 2015
• Lions Clubs Centennial (June 7, 2017) — signed into law October 5, 2012
• Breast Cancer Awareness Commemoration (2018) — signed into law April 29, 2016
• World War I Centennial (November 11, 2018) — signed into law December 16, 2014
• Apollo 11 50th Anniversary (July 20, 2019) — signed into law December 16, 2016
So Obama is known to have scheduled commemorative coins for points in time when he would no longer be president in several cases.
Of course, the Harriet Tubman $20 was also scheduled during Obama’s presidency for release at a time when Obama would no longer be president.
So a response that takes in to account the most generous interpretation of Trump’s question could be: “Mr. Trump, if Barack Obama had scheduled a coin to commemorate Women’s Suffrage in 2020, it’s even odds that you would have found some nonsensical excuse to cancel it, just like you did with the Harriet Tubman twenty dollar bill. Because everyone knows that you’re a misogynist and a racist pandering to a misogynist and racist base.”
Very possibly Trump was trying to insinuate that earlier presidents should have done “something” to celebrate women’s suffrage regardless of timing. That’d be how he talks up the importance of his own “achievement”.
He’s habitually a very sloppy communicator, and it’s often difficult to say how much it’s his thoughts that are nonsensical.
If so, he was forgetting the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
I say let’s declare our defense of New Year’s Day, against the right-wing War on Time.