Christmas, Channukah, C-wanzaa?

[Gurm]

So Logan comes home from school the other day all full of holiday cheer.

They were discussing holidays. We of course are a multi-faith extended family, so we do Channukah _and_ Christmas. That prompted a discussion about what people do to celebrate.

Logan was told at school that LOTS of people celebrate Kwanzaa. And as he is wont to do, he asked me if it was true or not.

So I was torn. Torn between my desire to NEVER lie to my kids, and my desire to not be "that parent". Y'know, like when it was thanksgiving and he asked me if they've really been celebrating Thanksgiving for hundreds of years (categoric NO) and if it was really about the Pilgrims and Indians (big FUC|<ING NO) and I was torn on whether or not to stick to my principles about revisionist history...

So... I compromised with myself and told him that Kwanzaa was a fine celebration and that some people in the USA celebrated it, and that it was very nice.

And now I'm just waiting for the follow-up question, because I _know_ they fed him the line about how Kwanzaa is an "ancient tradition that has been celebrated for thousands of years in Africa", and G-d only knows I won't let them fill his head with UTTER nonsense... *sigh*

KIDS.




Edit: I solved the Thanksgiving SNAFU by redirecting him to think about how it's a holiday for family and for being thankful, and we made a big list of things he's thankful for... and LUCKILY he dropped it... for now!

[ND66]

......
So I was torn.
....... [/i]

Did you say TORN?!



.

[gt40]

Did you say TORN?!



.

LOL, now that's entertainment.

[Jessterw]

I decided to be "that parent" much to the disdain of my wife. The only thing I've been relaxed about is Santa Claus, and even then it's been more about promoting the spirit of what he stands for, rather than the 'man' himself. Which is what we try to do with any holiday that is rooted in complete fallacies or has been remade into something us white folk can be proud of.

Of course, any history lessons are handled in a manner that doesn't create a distrust between Dillan and his teachers nor disrespect the greater intentions of a holiday or other event.

Unrelated to holidays, the most recent attempt was at introducing some reality into the Creation story that he's been learning at Sunday school. Luckily he is aware of what an analogies and allegories are from previous discussions, so the lesson was relatively painless. He'd already spotted some of the inconsistencies for himself.

[TransformX]

Trust me, here it's worse. Lag-Ba'Omer, the big story of Bar-Kohva's rebelion. Songs of heroity yada yada bla bla bla.
Point of fact is, the rebelion was crushed, Bar Kohva is knowin in the scriptures as Bar Kuziva (coming from the word disappointment in Hebrew), Rabi Akiva (one of the greatest in Jewish history) paid with his life for supporting him and his rebelion. Bottom line, he was a failure a big big failure that was one of the (quite few) reasons for the deportation of the Jews from Israel by the Romans.

[Tjalfe]

Just had to look it up.. Kwanzaa has only been around since 1966.. pretty new tradition

[Gurm]

Just had to look it up.. Kwanzaa has only been around since 1966.. pretty new tradition

Of course it has! But they claim that it's a worldwide ancient tradition. Load of GARBAGE.

Much like thanksgiving. Although the truth about that can be harder to find. Turns out ol' Abraham Lincoln liked the idea, wouldn't you know?

Even the Wikipedia article about it is filled with horrifying innacuracies.

[Nowhere]

So...what's the real story about it? (short...)

[Gurm]

So...what's the real story about it? (short...)

Americans for a long time now have thought that it's a good idea to have a national day of Thanksgiving. So have Canadians. It's not a terribly new or amazing idea.

The story with the Pilgrims? They spent quite a long time dying. The first year? They died. The second year? They died. The third year? They MOSTLY died. Their numbers fell off by HALF each year until the next boat came. No native americans came to give them corn. When they saw a native american they shot at him or her. It was a cold, hard, bleak, horrible reality.

Thanksgiving is one of the earliest modern examples of revisionist history which doesn't involve the victors of a war. Whoever wins in a conflict inevitably rewrites the history books, but it's a fairly modern trend to rewrite the history books to denigrate your own struggles and triumphs!

Or were you perhaps looking for the true story of Kwanzaa? It's a negro tradition intended to make people feel better about the fact that they were SOLD into slavery, not forcibly kidnapped. The truth is that the vast majority of African natives taken as slaves to work in the new world were sold into slavery by their own leaders in exchange for trinkets and whiskey. A relatively small percentage of the Amistad-style "hunt 'em down and lock 'em on a ship" kidnapping took place. You have to remember that we're talking about tiny warring tribes, hundreds of 'em. They hated each other (see modern-day Sudan for an excellent example - it's still going on). So the idea that there was some kind of unifying holiday that all the tribes celebrated? UTTER GARBAGE.

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm sure Tisquantum (aka: Squanto) would find your version 'interesting'. Because of Tisquantum's (admittedly self-serving) efforts in negotiating the 1621 Treaty of Plymouth between chief Massasoit and Governor William Bradford, which resulted in a peace between the settlers and the Wampanoag for ~50 years, including the years in question. In 1675 there was hostility because of the increasing numbers of settlers and their new laws, but by then most Wampanoag had succumbed to the plague of 1633.

Here's what the Smithsonian says about Thanksgiving itself;

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2005/december/squanto.php?page=9

First Thanksgiving

Tisquantum worked hard to prove his value to the Pilgrims. He was so successful that when some anti-British Indians abducted him, the colonists sent out a military expedition to get him back. Never did the newcomers ask themselves why he might be making himself essential. But from the Pilgrims’ accounts of their dealings with him, the answer seems clear: the alternative to staying in Plymouth was returning to Massasoit and renewed captivity.

Recognizing that the colonists would be unlikely to keep him around forever, Tisquantum decided to gather together the few Native survivors of Patuxet and reconstitute the old community at a site near Plymouth. More ambitious still, he hoped to use his influence on the English to make this new Patuxet the center of the Wampanoag confederation, thereby stripping the sachemship from Massasoit. To accomplish these goals, as Governor Bradford later recounted, he intended to play the Indians and English against each other.

The scheme was risky, not least because the ever-suspicious Massasoit had sent one of his pniese, Hobamok, to Plymouth as a monitor. Sometimes Hobamok and Tisquantum worked together, as when the pair helped the Pilgrims negotiate a treaty with the Massachusett to the north. They also helped establish a truce with the Nauset of Cape Cod after Governor Bradford agreed to pay back the losses caused by the colonists’ earlier grave robbing.

By fall the settlers’ situation was secure enough that they held a feast of thanksgiving. Massasoit showed up with “some ninety men,” Winslow later recalled, most of them with weapons. The Pilgrim militia responded by marching around and firing their guns in the air in a manner intended to convey menace. Gratified, both sides sat down, ate a lot of food and complained about the Narragansett. Ecce Thanksgiving.