Thanksgiving

I'm one of those heathens that really doesn't like Thanksgiving. It strikes me as the most useless holiday of the year, one devoted strictly to gluttony in a nation of already dangerously overweight people. I suppose that it's because we've more or less lost the original intent of Thanksgiving, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the ridiculous imagery of Pilgrims sitting down peacefully to share a meal with Native Americans, when nothing could have been further from the truth. It's all so absurdly contrived and people eat that up without really understanding what Thanksgiving was supposed to mean and why it was created. The Pilgrims have no role whatsoever in the holiday we celebrate each November. In point of fact, it's a commemoration of the long dark years of the American Civil War. As it was winding down in 1864, Lincoln decided it was time for our nation to give thanks, so the holiday we now celebrate each November has been corrupted to mean to commemorate some nebulous imagery of Pilgrims giving thanks via a peaceful meal with the natives who in point of fact they slaughtered in obscene numbers. Any peace between the English and Natives vanished very quickly and disintigrated into open warfare between the two, resulting in the extinction of some tribes of Natives who had no way to resist the onslaught of the English, their weaponry and their diseases. So if this holiday is supposed to be all about Native Americans, it's a sorry excuse for one. Not to put a damper on the day, but I truly don't care for this holiday other than the long weekend it used to give me that I am no longer allowed to take. I hate having days off work in the middle of the week as it is. It makes the workweek feel interrupted somehow and honestly, I wish they'd just move this holiday to a Friday and be done with it so Americans could have a three day weekend. Get rid of "Black Friday" and make it "Black Saturday" instead. After all, who has the Friday after Thanksgiving off work anymore? Certainly not me, and nobody else I know does, either. So for those of you who do love this holiday, well, have a good one and leave the rest of us to at least enjoy having a rare day off work. At least this holiday is good for that, but I hope that someday this country comes to its senses and moves it to Friday instead.