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Franksgiving

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All kinds of protests leading into Thanksgiving Day weekend.  There is the National Day of Mourning for Native Americans, or Unthanksgiving as they call it on the West Coast, first organized in 1970 by the United American Indians of New England who wanted Americans to take note of the "democide" that took place in the wake of the first Thanksgiving all those years ago.

In addition, Macy's has come under fire for a Sea World float, which protesters claim misrepresents the way Orcas are treated in captivity.  This is in the wake of a recent documentary, Blackfish, which examines the life of Tilikum, who killed a trainer at Sea World in 2010.

But, it seems that most persons are upset that Black Friday has been moved up to Thursday with many greedy retailers offering big discounts on Thanksgiving, which has been traditionally reserved as a family holiday.  This means a lot of workers will have to report for duty who otherwise would have had the day off to be with their families.

Ironically, it was FDR who moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday in November so that retailers could have the traditional start of the Christmas holiday shopping season start as early as Friday, Nov. 23.  For a brief while, the holiday was dubbed Franksgiving.  Unfortunately, for retailers the fourth Thursday fell on the 28th this year, with Black Friday on the 29th, which meant they would lose 6 days.  Unprecedented!

Even with all this controversy, the show will go on.  Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will take place with marching bands, Rockettes, the gargantuan floating balloons and of course Santa at the end of the long line to usher in the Holiday season.

Comments

  1. avrdsNovember 27, 2013 at 10:57 PM

    Happy Thanksgiving everyone. There's a story today that this is the best American holiday -- inclusive and not commercial. I'll drink a toast to that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonNovember 30, 2013 at 12:18 PM

    Hope you had good one too av. Here's a little trip down Macy's memory lane,

    http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/movie-marquee-of-the-week-thanksgiving-edition

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsNovember 30, 2013 at 2:14 PM

    What a great little window into the past. Believe it or not, I've never watched the parade, but love these balloons. The first thing I noticed was the mysterious "S.A.T.?" Sounds like a take off of See America First, which was a promotion for the national parks.

    ReplyDelete

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