HAPPY EVACUATION DAY
Nov. 25th, 2011 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogThanksgiving has never really worked for me as a holiday, either in its (noticeably glossed over) historical context or its modern form as a celebration of gluttony, family values and (mostly) American football.
Luckily, there’s a more meaningful US holiday the day after Thanksgiving: Evacuation Day, which commemorates the last of the British troops fleeing Manhattan at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.
Sarah Vowell explains.
Not that I’m all that patriotic either. But I likes a good history lesson. And to paraphrase Vowell, I’m more impressed by the story of 11,000 American POWs wasting away in British prison ships for seven years, refusing to swear loyalty to the crown, then being freed by rebel victory, than I am about a dinner held by "Mayflower-cruising Jesus freak cornrustlers".
“Americans are always so excited about the beginning of a war – what if we celebrated how we used to be good at ending them?”
And stay out,
This is dF
Luckily, there’s a more meaningful US holiday the day after Thanksgiving: Evacuation Day, which commemorates the last of the British troops fleeing Manhattan at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.
Sarah Vowell explains.
Not that I’m all that patriotic either. But I likes a good history lesson. And to paraphrase Vowell, I’m more impressed by the story of 11,000 American POWs wasting away in British prison ships for seven years, refusing to swear loyalty to the crown, then being freed by rebel victory, than I am about a dinner held by "Mayflower-cruising Jesus freak cornrustlers".
“Americans are always so excited about the beginning of a war – what if we celebrated how we used to be good at ending them?”
And stay out,
This is dF
