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Monday, November 20, 2017

We're in for it now. Holiday season is starting. Halloween was just a warm up. A practice run. Because in a few days we will be facing one of the big ones; Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday that is an amalgam of different traditions, including ancient harvest festivals, the religious New England Puritan Thanksgiving, the traditional harvest celebrations of England and New England, and changing political and ideological assumptions of Native Americans.

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Today's Random Fact:

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the next-to-last Thursday in November to prolong the holiday shopping season, many Republicans rebelled. The holiday was temporarily celebrated on different dates: November 30 became the "Republican Thanksgiving" and November 23 was "Franksgiving" or "Democrat Thanksgiving."




Bonus Fact:

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879), who tirelessly worked to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday, also was the first person to advocate women as teachers in public schools, the first to advocate day nurseries to assist working mothers, and the first to propose public playgrounds. She was also the author of two dozen books and hundreds of poems, including "Mary Had a Little Lamb."