Over the years I have posted many stories about Thanksgiving on this blog. I’ve kept the tone light, included lots of delicious or ancient recipes. I have attempted to draw my readers into the past, in order to experience how the day was spent years ago. This year I’m taking a different tact.
I think that everyone needs to think of at least three things that bless their lives, before they complain about one thing that does not. We live in an uncertain world, but honestly the past was not better, just different. We make today what it is–full of amazing miracles, or full of evil and bad events. It is all a matter of perspective.
On that note, I am simply going to share some more or less light-hearted quotations that I 
enjoyed reading about Thanksgiving (mostly from GoodReads), along with some victorian era postcards from the 1880s-early 1900s.
Bon appetite!
“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.”
― Mark Twain
“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
― Jon Stewart
“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot h’ors d’ourves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”
― Paul Rudnick
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
“I like football. I find its an exciting strategic game. Its a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving.”
― Craig Ferguson
“Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.”
― Augusten Burroughs, You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
