THANKSGIVING MASKING IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL

[defrog]

Or, “If you play ‘Thanksgiving’ backwards, it says ‘Lucifer smokes yr bananas’.”

As you may have noticed, I’m not big on Thanksgiving as a holiday (and yet I've managed to get three [3] posts out of it). But I would be if it was more like Halloween.

Which, evidently, it used to be, according to Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing:

Before Halloween became the holiday it now is in the United States, children would dress up in masks on the final Thursday in November and go door to door for treats (think: fruit!), or scramble for pennies. The tradition was known as Thanksgiving Masking.

Click the pic for more pics.

I also rather like this excerpt from the Encyclopedia.com entry on Thanksgiving history in America:

Progressive era reformers regarded child begging on Thanksgiving as immoral and thought children who engaged in it should be arrested. Why were parents not able to control their offspring? the New York Times in 1903 wanted to know. (30) The newspaper castigated parents who allowed children to demand treats or money as indecent.(31) The police tried to enforce a ban against begging. In response to complaints from the public, the clergy, school superintendents, and classroom teachers issued warnings. The New York Times in November of 1930 worried that demanding coins could teach children to become professional beggars and blackmailers and that children were annoying the public.(32) Begging, decided the paper, was a "malicious influence on the morals of children of the city.

Wow. My kind of holiday.

Naturally, The Authorities eventually stamped out the practice, clearing the way for Thanksgiving to become a much more moral celebration of God, gluttony and football.

Still, it's an interesting slice of obscure American history.

Thanks for nothing,

This is dF

Comments

[jblaque.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I had no idea.