beginning of the gift giving and buying season
This ties back to what I assumed about the tradition of Thanksgiving football. Time to spend all your money and punch people in the face on black friday, because that's what the season is really all about, right?
Many schools still have ThanksgivingDay pageants and numerous textbooks continue to give thetraditional story.
This was my experience growing up. The story of the Pilgrims and Native Americans was celebrated, but the darker history was seldom talked about.
people beganto associate sports and physical fitness with Christian and Americanvirtues such as self-reliance, courage, endurance, and self-denial.
Interesting shift in the view of sports through the eyes of Christians.
hirteen years after Lincoln made the holiday ‘official’, the firstThanksgiving football game was played on a field at Stevens Instate,Hoboken, New Jersey. The trend rapidly grew and by 1895 theChicago Tribune estimated that as many as 120,000 athletes wereinvolved in Thanksgiving Day games throughout the country.
I had no idea that the tradition of Football on Thanksgiving dated all the way back to the 19th century. I would've assumed it was a more modern thing meant to sell advertisements on television and radio.
In addition to representing patriotism and social solidarity, theholiday at this time was being cultivated into a domestic occasion
Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving shows the need for unity after the tumultuous years of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
It wasshortly before this time that the flight of the pilgrims to the NewWorld from English tyranny was seen to have patriotic meaning.
Despite the fact that the American Revolution wouldn't happen for another 150 years. Interesting to consider the Pilgrims "Patriotic"
s a sense ofcontinuity and unity with the past, which can be maintainedthrough enduring memories
New memories can also be added, changing some traditions for the better.
Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day.Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz’s theory that commemorationreflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims’ celebration, many peoplecommemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying
And some people today outright refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving due to the past treatment of Native Americans. I'm not one of those people, but that's because when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of cooking a meal and spending time with my family. No one has to venerate the past if they don't want to.
Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed foran instant, and the stone becomes famous; it is treasuredby a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic"
Ordinary things can be considered sacred, depending on what happened and when.
This produced a short list ofeight masons, including the restorer of Belvedere Castle, inM8:nhattan's Central Park, and the restorer of Austin Block,in the Charlestown section of Boston-a three-story granitebuilding made of rock from an island in Boston Harbor
Shows that the task of preserving the past for future generations is not one that is taken lightly.
The part of Massachusetts that includes Plymouth andBoston is now understood to derive from overseas. If fromEurope, part of New England could be part of Old England,a New Old England in an Old New England or an Old OldEngland in a New New England
Interesting parallel. What I gather from this is that the land itself, just as the colonists, was originally European, and is now populated again by Europeans.
Plymouth Rock is a bowlder from the vi-cinity of Boston, having accomplished its pilgrimage longbefore the departure
Interesting to compare the Plymouth Rock to the actual human pilgrims.
Intheir searches the explorers found stored corn in buriedbaskets, which they took for their own use. They openedthe grave of a child.
Blatant disrespect for the customs and traditions of the Natives
the oldest symbol of the New World was indire need of a mason
Could be seen as a metaphor for our nation becoming more divided over time.
If so, the lower half was the Tory half, for it stayedbehind
Interesting symbolism separating the Crown from the Colony.