Talk:Thanksgiving

Historical and cultural omissions

This article has two main problems.

1) There is a glaring omission of Native American history from this entire entry. It reflects a clear bias. Below are articles with information to begin to correct the problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1650bradford.asp#Treaty%20with%20the%20Indians http://americanindiansource.com/mourningday.html

2) Rather than define Thanksgiving in the specific context of the national US holiday, the article includes irrelevant and distracting factoids about other harvest festivals and uses of the term thanksgiving in different contexts. If these must remain on the same page, they should be separated out by category to clarify the US national holiday and its particular mythologies/histories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.113.195 (talk) 07:24, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the above poster, many mentions of Thanksgiving as a group of holidays from pre-Columbian and certainly pre-Mayflower native Americans links to this article. The history section is laughable coming from these articles, and could be corrected with a short paragraph on pre-Mayflower thanksgivings (in addition to the above posters links, the Indians on Hispanola were brutally slaughtered by the Spanish for having the gall to have a Thanksgiving celebration. And even THAT article says, "Although the festival ended up as a massacre, it is regarded as the first Thanksgiving of the New World."

Which is complete nonsense! Maybe, "the first Thanksgiving witnessed by a European, that we have records for." 71.255.38.213 (talk) 09:47, 11 March 2016 (UTC)Chezzo Osman

An additional problem is the mention that saxons were offering sheafs of corn (in UK). Corn is a plant native to America and Europeans became aware of its existence after Christopher Columbus came back from the Americas, much, much after the Saxons were no more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sperigny (talk • contribs) 14:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually that's "corn" in British English which means "cereals", oats, barley, wheat. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:11, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Daily Telegraph article claiming that 1 in 6 Britons celebrate Thanksgiving

What utter nonsense! (1) "One in six British people now celebrates Thanksgiving, according to a new survey." The cited article gives no link to that "survey". (2) "Coventry is, apparently, the epicentre of this outpouring of American love." Total bullshit! I have lived in Coventry since 1973 and have never - but never heard of anyone celebrating American-style Thanksgiving in that city. Narky Blert (talk) 02:08, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

There's a discussion about this further up the page. I have found a press release from Waitrose which is the source for this churnalism (http://waitrose.pressarea.com/pressrelease/details/78/PRODUCT%20NEWS_12/3613) but as previously noted the methodology, sample size and questions have not been published. I don't think it could be considered a reliable source. --Walnuts go kapow (talk) 08:39, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I think we now have an emerging consensus that the Telegraph reference is just PR bollocks, so it would seem appropriate to modify the article accordingly unless somebody comes up with a real WP:RS stating that 10 million Brits sat down to pumpkin pie and turkey last Thursday. I'll do the deed in a couple of weeks if nobody objects. --Ef80 (talk) 22:19, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes - there is complete agreement and consensus. The article should be corrected and the unreliable sources removed. Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 13:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Dubious statements with weak refs removed. --Ef80 (talk) 18:55, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 November 2016

124.109.47.85 (talk) 07:23, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not requested a change.
If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 10:19, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanksgiving date wrong, lmao

Think it's really funny that the most important piece of information is wrong in a locked article.

Thanksgiving in the U.S. is on the 24th in 2016. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:558:6025:75:50B3:BBA0:681B:E9DC (talk) 13:33, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what are you referring to in the article? The infobox already says Nov 24, 2016 for the US and Puerto Rico. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:42, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Rephrasing of Introduction

The last sentence of the introduction is worded thus: "Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well."

I think it should be changed to:"Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated by secular people as well."

The reason is, thanksgiving is generally celebrated the same way by secular and religious groups (with the exception of certain groups who attend a religious service). The phrasing "it has...been celebrated in a secular manner..." leads me to search the contents for a section describing the distinction between "religious manner" and "secular manner" with regard to thanksgiving custom. Again, as far as I know, no such distinction can be accurately generalized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.167.23 (talk) 19:14, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Tried to add to the lead

I've tried to add the relevant articles in brackets for the mentioned respective holidays in Germany and Japan (harvest festival and tsukimi), but I found the article to be semi-protected. --79.242.219.119 (talk) 09:45, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks but if you look down in the article for Germany and Japan, it is actually referring to different days that have "Thanksgiving" in them. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Thing is, when it comes to the references further down, the article currently links to the German Wikipedia (inter-wiki links are discouraged), and a non-traditional, post-1945 holiday is linked for Japan that has nothing to do with harvests but is actually the Japanese adoption of Labor Day from the West, where people "thank" not for the harvest but for people's work efforts in any field whatsoever to make society work unisono as one well-oiled machine. On the other hand, tsukimi is the actual and traditional harvest festival in relation to the harvest moon and celebrated roughly around the same time as Thanksgiving. --79.242.219.119 (talk) 20:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's that the days are named "thanksgiving", that's why they are mentioned. This article is for things named "thanksgiving."Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:32, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Literally, kinrō kansha no hi is "Day of Being Grateful for Labor". No "giving" in there. --79.242.219.119 (talk) 20:39, 1 March 2017 (UTC)