Fall Feast Day?

January 16, 2008 10:50 AM

A friend of mine says that schools are starting to use the label Fall Feast Day instead of Thanksgiving. Is that true? And if so, what was wrong with Thanksgiving?
posted by rsol44 to society & culture (27 comments total)

what was wrong with Thanksgiving?

Basically, many people feel that the traditional story of Thanksgiving is historically inaccruate and portrays an unrealistically happy image of the relationship between US settlers and the native populations. This site has a good overview of this postion.

From the site:

For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:58 AM on January 16, 2008

Oops, messed up the link to the site.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:59 AM on January 16, 2008

Well, not that many schools:

Results 1 - 10 of about 421 for "fall feast day"
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:59 AM on January 16, 2008

Your friend wouldn't be a devotee of Bill O'Reilly by any chance, would he or she? This sounds a lot like the "liberal war on Christmas" shtick that's served him so well. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear of him or people in that neck of the ideological woods trying to expand it to other traditional holidays.

But I've never heard of anyone actually DOING what you describe.
posted by Naberius at 11:07 AM on January 16, 2008 [3 favorites]

Can your friend offer proof that more than one school has used, or is planning this far in advance to use, "Fall Feast Day"? Because it sounds like the kind of thing that right wing AM radio talk show hosts pull out of their ass to get all angry at the "PC brigade" about.
posted by cmonkey at 11:10 AM on January 16, 2008

My nieces and nephew have a fall break (Thanksgiving) and a Winter break (Christmas).
posted by Monday at 11:14 AM on January 16, 2008

Oh jeez. My kid goes to public school in the Bay Area, and there's Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas and the whole deal. Hysteria over nothing.
posted by padraigin at 11:15 AM on January 16, 2008

I don't know about how schools are (or aren't) referring to Thanksgiving, but I was watching an episode of "Clifford's Puppy Days" (animated show on PBS) with my 3-year old and the storyline centered around Fall Feast Day. Actually I can't remember what the exact term they used was, I think it was Fall Feast Day, but it took me most of the episode to figure out WTH they meant. And it really pissed me off. I was thinking, is this Canadian? Is this some kind of universal world holiday that I don't know about? LOL.
posted by missuswayne at 11:15 AM on January 16, 2008

For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Ha ha ha ha ha. As a flesh and blood American Indian, I can assure you that these people are full of shit. There are always going to be fringe element to every group claiming god-knows-what, but there is no organized or substantial movement in the NA community behind what is written above.

Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving. Do not listen to the hype.
posted by unixrat at 11:22 AM on January 16, 2008 [3 favorites]

Your friend wouldn't be a devotee of Bill O'Reilly by any chance

Why would he or the far-right give two shits about the authenticy of Thanksgiving or the supposed feelings of NA community? If anything this sounds like the work of the looney left, not the looney right.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:28 AM on January 16, 2008

Your friend wouldn't be a devotee of Bill O'Reilly by any chance

Why would he or the far-right give two shits about the authenticy of Thanksgiving or the supposed feelings of NA community? If anything this sounds like the work of the looney left, not the looney right.

The point of the poster above was that right-wingers would use this made-up "movement" as an example of the excesses of the politically-correct looney left.
posted by JimN2TAW at 11:31 AM on January 16, 2008

I'm thinking that the point is that the loony right is making shit up to tar the left with and no one's really trying to rename Thanksgiving.
posted by ursus_comiter at 11:32 AM on January 16, 2008

The site linked above by burnmp3s is interesting. That particular site doesn't mention any movement to rename Thanksgiving Day, but it does analyze a lot of myths about the early settlement period of the US. Is the information on that site reliable? Is any of it wrong?
posted by JimN2TAW at 11:39 AM on January 16, 2008

missuswayne, that strange that Clifford would promote "Fall Feast Day" because I find the books and shows to be the most WASPy Christian 1950 pablum out there. (And I loved Clifford growing up too!) I am not sure why you thought it was Canadian, Canada has it's own Thanksgiving on a different day with it's own history seperate from the American one. Actually, Canada had Thanksgiving first (1578, take THAT pilgrims of 1621). I live in an area where Iroquois lived originally and the school children here are taught the First Nations origin of the thanking the Three Sisters for the autumn bounty as the original source of Canadian Thanksgiving.

I haven't heard of schools celebrating a Fall Feast Day, sorry. That seems really weird.
posted by saucysault at 11:52 AM on January 16, 2008

I have never heard of "Fall Feast Day" But in Berkeley, and apparently elsewhere based on a quick google, Columbus Day has been renamed "Indigenous People's Day"

"indigenous people's day" gets about 7500 hits on google. Maybe this is what your friend was thinking of?
posted by paddingtonb at 12:02 PM on January 16, 2008

I could see some schools doing it if they host a lot of international students, who might not celebrate or care to understand our holiday.

But mostly I am with the "this is a ploy by the right-wing loonies" crowd on this.
posted by briank at 12:24 PM on January 16, 2008

I've seen that Clifford episode - I assumed it was done so they could use the same version for all foreign-but-english-speaking markets.

because I find the books and shows to be the most WASPy Christian 1950 pablum out there

It is pretty interesting to find the older, original books and compare them to the modern books and/or tv show.
posted by mikepop at 12:28 PM on January 16, 2008

My multinational, many cultured company has a "Harvest Feast" every year the week before Thanksgiving, at which we serve turkey with all the trimmings.
That's about as close as I've seen to "renaming Thanksgiving".
posted by madajb at 12:39 PM on January 16, 2008

My wife teaches at a very diverse school up in Harlem with a bunch of foreign born students, and responded to my IM'ed question about this with "That's news to us" (after asking her fellow teachers if they'd ever heard it).

So I'm going to agree that this must be the opening salvo in the "War on Thanksgiving".

I'm looking forward to the "War on Memorial Day".
posted by JaredSeth at 12:42 PM on January 16, 2008

I'm guessing that if this is the case, it's because "thanksgiving" connotes "giving thanks to God." From George Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation:

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks..."

I'm guessing a renaming would be so that children of other religions wouldn't be left out. That, or historical sensitivity sounds like a good possibility.

But I've never heard Thanksgiving called anything but Thanksgiving, or Turkey Day, or something related to football.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:44 PM on January 16, 2008

I went to a school that called it Multi-Culti Day (after Multi-Cultural), but that was because every classroom would pick a different culture and present their food in a big not-school-as-usual day.

And I know a couple of Canadians who refuse to call ours Thanksgiving, but that's more the fanciful notions of their delightful people rather than any concerted campaign.

(As to the BurnMP3 link's veracity? It's bullshit, through and through.)
posted by klangklangston at 1:00 PM on January 16, 2008

But I've never heard Thanksgiving called anything but Thanksgiving, or Turkey Day, or something related to football.

You must be forgetting the ever-popular moniker "Franksgiving".

None of my elementary school teacher friends have heard anything about this alleged renaming of the holiday, though. If it's actually happening, I don't think it's widespread.
posted by vytae at 1:34 PM on January 16, 2008

We had a Fall Feast Day this year at school. And for the actual feast people were also encouraged to bring foods from their ethnicity
posted by artifarce at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2008

Though I should add as a caveat to the above that on looking at their official calendar, it's labeled as "Thanksgiving" and Fall Feast Day was what the kindergarten classes referred to it as.
posted by artifarce at 2:26 PM on January 16, 2008

Playing "ain't it awful" about PC is not just for the loony right.
posted by flabdablet at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2008

Odd that the rename would be to "Fall Feast Day" when "Harvest Festival" (289,000 hits) "Harvest Home" (264,000 hits), etc. already exist. Or have those terms fallen completely out of use in the US?
posted by Leon at 4:15 PM on January 16, 2008

Sounds like classic right-wing "political correctness gone mad" propaganda to me - but don't worry, that's not unique to your side of the pond.

We had a "case" over here in the UK at Christmas where the following sequence of events happened:

1) ONE primary school (kids up to the age of 10) sent a polite note to parents suggesting that they get their kids to send "class" christmas cards (i.e. one to each class) rather than one to every child in each class.

This was because they'd had previous problems where individual kids got forgotten/left out and got upset/teased, and because (as this schools catchment area contained some very poor estates) the whole need to send "lots and lots of cards" thing could place a lot of pressure on some parents who couldn't afford it.

2) Some parents objected (fair enough i suppose) and as a result the local paper ran a small piece about it.

3) Major (right leaning) national tabloid gets hold of it. Next day its front page proclaims (with righteous anger):

SCHOOLS BAN CHRISTMAS!!!!

So like i say, you Septics don't have a monopoly on the right-wing-outrage thing!
posted by garius at 1:43 AM on January 17, 2008