A 9 minute video to find out whether you think Thanksgiving is meaningless for non-Christians who don't "believe in a Supreme Being"? Seems legit. After all, if there is someone who knows how meaningful a holiday is to a non-Christian, it's a Christian.

Also, there are a lot of non-Christians who are confused as to why they suddenly don't believe in a supreme being, when Allah and Vishnu, for two popular examples, are pretty clear on those claims.

I'm going to do something I don't normally do; I'm going to comment without watching the video! 

I don't see the connection between Thanksgiving and Christianity as being in any way exclusive.  Gratitude isn't a feeling that can only be felt towards God, let alone ONLY a Christian God.  Setting aside a day to come together with family and feel fortunate for the good things in your life is something anyone can do. 

I tried clicking on the link and it didn't work.

You probably dodged a 9 minute bullet.

I'm not sure mark_andrew considers himself a Christian. That would be for him to tell us.

I do agree that a 9-minute video explaining the meaning of Thanksgiving for non-Christians is a bit of unnecessary overkill. I think the meaning is to be thankful. When I was a non-Christian nothing stopped me from celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc., etc. I just celebrated without any spiritual emphasis. I didn't need a 9-minute video to tell me why.

Ahhh....okay. I misread. Apologies may be in order. I'm so used to Christians telling non-Christians how non-Christians think, that I may have jumped the gun on Mark Andrew. Sorry, MA.

Now that I try to watch the video to see where he's going with this, my laptop has decided that sound is overrated. I'll have to watch it from home later today.

See, to me Thanksgiving isn't a particularly sectarian holiday. Any tradition, even atheists, can celebrate or be thankful for what they have and hope that others may also receive. Who you express it to and how you express it will be different from tradition to tradition (Yahweh, Allah, the Goddess, God, or just generally feeling thankful & hopeful if you're atheist/agnostic), but there's room for some kind of celebration.

It's holidays like Christmas and Easter that are tightly tied to one tradition (though they may have ties to others as both of these do) that present more of a problem IMHO.

Mendalla

Can some people be thankful of nothing as just want more when they have so much that they can't even know what they have?

Seems to me a grand foundationstone for greed ... a God out of control!

Consider the rich and powerful, do they seem to have lost IT ... connections with the significant other as a sect of singularity like a pair of individuals that do relate in alchemii? Could appear as 11 ... as dedeuce ... one short of the Light of awareness ... Sapience? Such could be contained as in incognate where intellect is loch'd up in a pig's kin ...

Did you know biologists say thay humans are gynetically close to swine .. a huge metaphor to say least about ID? We can even exchange heart valves creating some inclination of truths ... just blows the soul of the wild spirit that is clear of that ... OBI?

Just ouda'eire ... near deflated by inordinate behaviour of the emotional species ... this has to be humouring something that we don't know ... sublime or justly unseen (II Corinthians 4:18)? ID keep my head down too ... if there's that much to learn in the dirt of life ... mire images, castings, skett or just nos 'ite ...

Happy as a pig not to know they say ... a sort of numbing sense ... creeping ignorance ... as a silent conspiracy! Some don't believe it exists ... so easy to aquire ... simply don't think. Its not that complex ... albeit irrationale as a gift from all that's out there ...

Shellfish toxic? Something like hardshells ... something that should be shat thro' before something distastefull hangs up in the system ...

Like Shuol phesh parroting whatever they see ... con't get any meat in the depths ... only the bony skeleton in the wardrobe ... as a fabrication on Shadows ...

What can be druid from it is immensae ...

Nice video.  Enjoyable sermon, even for this atheist.  Here's a link to the video that works:

A bit of egg on your face, chansen?

It happens.

What do atheists eat on Thanksgiving?

crow?

mark_andrews78,

nice vid of the possible issues raised when one changes one's subculture :3

EDIT:  the thing that always tweaks my funny bone aboot the Puritan sect is that they were TOO CONSERVATIVE EVEN FOR EUROPE...and that's saying something :3  Plus, they engaged in lovely murderous purges in their homeland and I always wonder just how much their BS (belief system) has been included in the Merrycan character, if such a thing can be said to exist at all...

well, if you were a gambler, every hand would be a royal flush ;3

Turkey, like most other people. Thanksgiving doesn't even have any religious connotation to me, like Christmas does. Why do you need to believe in a supreme being to be thankful?

I understand the idea that people like to thank "God" for the food on their plate, the health of their family, their homes, etc., but in the past few days alone I have actually thanked the people who helped prepare a thanksgiving meal, the doctors and nurses and staff involved in the care of a family member, and even my damn financial planner. I've been in contact with all since Friday, and I make a point when someone helps me, to say, "Thank you," and not just at this time of year.

Not only is it polite, it's also sincere. "God" didn't do anything - these people did, and if I thanked and felt gratitude toward some unseen deity, I'd consider myself a putz for taking the focus off the real people who deserve my gratitude, and putting it toward some ultimately self-serving attempt to appease a being who nobody can produce.

chansen,

you're Canadian and a chansen -- now that you've given your serious Tribal answer, do you have a funny answer? :3

dude, it was a joke 

Because it's Tyson and blackbelt conversing, there is going to be an obvious witty reply available to me, but I'm not on my game right now. I spent the morning being funny for kids and television personalities and corporate bigwigs. Had a great time, but now I'm exhausted.

So, I'm all out of funny at the moment. Sorry if you don't like serious.

Ahhh. Perhaps you need to make it more clear when it is that you're making a ridiculous assertion, vs. an offhanded attempt at humour. They look a lot alike.

I'm struggling to understand the idea that only Christians celebrate thanksgiving (fall festival), or Christmas (winter frolics to brighten the darker days) or Easter (and the spring feeling).  To me they are all wonderful excuses to gather with family and friends for food and fun.  Absolutely no reason that I can think of to force dogma, declarations of faith or an imaginary being into the celebrations.   Lets celebrate humanity!

Happy Festivus everyone!

I dunno about you, but I ate turkey.  Why?

Why the hell is everybody so damned serious?

I ate turkey as well. Had yams instead of potatoes, though. Yams are better.

I had turkey too - it was the cheapest meat available in the store.  I prefer free range chicken but can't afford it on the rare occasions I can find it.

Yams are far better than potatoes, you're right.  Except as scalloped potatoes.  Yams don't work well for that.  I made the scalloped potatoes for our dinner, with leeks and mushrooms in the layers.  But yams on their own are far superior to potatoes on their own.

Pota'toes are dirty fruit comes from the roots of the vegetable ... and stoics don't like to go to the root of the bloody humour ... they might find an extension of the self as imploded ... bottomline alien stuff like accrude sole or community thought ... an intangible ... but sometimes you can almost taste it (sapient?) as something larger ... like the invisible "they"! It is a population in denial as we haven't got the intelligence to see the connection ... a sort of communicable thing that is lost in communion due to our preference for chaos of  shunned emotion! Somethings just have to be contained on a larger scale ... but only seen from outside they system ... a scientific thesis that is not much different than theosophy ... but not curtailed as the dog Maw! there's much more to ID than limited folks would care to admit ... thus IT's out there ... that which isn't ID! 

Does that define mortal gods that's ye? Not very elastic eh! The Ego part hasn't much bounce like the obtuse angle ... if too sharp it absorbs untill sated ... then busts out ... leading to Big Bang thoughts ...

Autocracy just refers to it as the useless demos ... not knowing the sublime nature of the support system that is somewhat integral as imagined ... a projected God? This is defined as salient in Webster a damned lexicon of words and you know what the emotional believes about those that question what is unknown and unseen! Great humour for "they" that are exterior like intellect as alchemii to the mote've sorts, however many of eM are dead and beyond us as Classic Wisdom is imbibed ... by minds in alternate state of thinking ... 

Black'ole Humour? :-3 Only seen from out there ... OBI? Be the NDE 've meiç, witches close to mice .. myopic in bright lights ... representative of the fringe anima ... as soul can't work without mythical Icons! That's mys Tory as firm as it is until expurgated (catharsis?) until sic ... an approximation of how it all began as a screwup of cosmological dimension. Wasn't a clue without the obtuse factor that got painful enough to learn ... daemon of a thing to those believing in comfort ... allowing some of us to be a pain in the as's to those stoics that thought they were funny ... all things rotate ... 

Just look at the attitude the English spun on Eire, a Celtic Hole! They must be pud'own  ... in a matter of word that can alter in a flash ... so mortals will never understand obtuse ... a dull thing like unseen spatial order ... emotives can never quite get themselves aboot IT .. like a Rue Bare ... isn't that gummy? The Hebrew confined there emotions to a lambskin where it evaporated and thus you hardly ever see Hebrew today ... King J'aimes thought in un-aimiable as alternate chaos to emotions! Forms the root of the indeterminate soul ... lost in time as a construct of bloody excised light ... rues a crucian ... a mythical containment that has not end tuit! It does somestimes have incidents in vacant space as quantum as the wayward winds ... mire chancce in a infinite hole is unity ... a sort of weird singularity ... like a mind that few will admit befriending as they lean towards the emotional chaos ...

Be the end of me ... I hear it calling ...

(I put the video back in the opening post.)

To be fair... Thanksgiving is one holiday that Christians did NOT steal from other people and try to claim as theirs only.

Actually I think it's the only holiday they didn't steal....

By imaginary being do you mean Santa, the Easter Bunny or the turkey?  Christians have no problem sharing a legally obtained religious holiday with the non-religious but it will still take an act of law to turn them officially secular. Until then enjoy the day off compliments of the Christian faith and try not to feel too guilty for not working on a day legally commemorating what you don't believe in.

Wow, such arrogance.

And you wonder why Christianity is losing ground and relevance in our society....

not4prophet,

there are non-secular Christians in Canada???

Are you saying you would rather work? :)

[/quote]

Wow, such arrogance.

And you wonder why Christianity is losing ground and relevance in our society....

[/quote]

All it takes is the belief you possess everything as a gift and none other has the right to anything. It is said possion is 90% ... even if man can''t hold onto ath'ught. Where do they goest ? They're w'Eire'd but no one will admit to being affected by the strange and alien along the way ... thus the concept of somnolent, or unconscious my-end ... that might be altered to numb mind with some redaction! These are the borders that usually direct mortal activities ... we call them mortal! The main objective is to create an unprocessing mind when the aboriginal thought was dispossessing thoughts so they could be char'd (charred, burned in?) and thus the error about char-lie ... a misdirected thought as the dark bonnie prince. He was found in the ills of the Gael ... totally irrational but what instigates thought any better ... errors that we could call emotional and thus the mortal ...

It can be corrected whn out-of-Eire ... and psyche gets Erse claws into him as if chi were the daemon ... the well-red lady as anabaptist? That's a rising thought like Eris in arcane English ... 'arcana ... you can hear the wispers from way out in the past ... but some people do not believe in such fields of dimensions ... as measured metaphor ich-Allah! Ghosts in the arid lands?

What do you expect if the business purpose is to keep everybody in the dark? Eventually someone will discover the wicci'd candle and start reading intuit!

Such might be the flat out basis of the great pretender as desire in exploded form when the one who knows and has collected all this info is subtle .. sometimes in the metaphor of humble that is unlike religion creating the axiom: "That's hoe it isn't!" Sodified and cultivated it'll produce ... sod omi think about that as alteration in evolved form ... personal redaction! It is a talent Toby shared in the Shadow ... a tome ... if the autocracy hasn't burned eM all as their personal form of literary device ...

Did creation form satire for nothing?

Is that ode? Perhaps, if you understand ode as an old Ba'aL ad' .. what the Hebrew called overhead light as soul singularity. It is difficult to comprehend or get a grasp of as light is a complex unknown ... Da Vinci was persecuted for investigating the depths of it as something out'eire! It is something stored beyond the isolated/mahaineim that came to be what jaqeh fell upon as ob-tues ... all bent out of shape over receiving it sacredly ... enough to warm the kohl heart eh like that old novel about shooting black things ashore (Heart of Darkness)? There are vast anachronisms to keep o'm'n guessing about what they didn't know ... jus twas n't there!

And jaqah islight on the rebound as it uncoils after impaction ... perfectly elastic or sometimes related to as Ego as it comes up ... Eris'n powers as eccos of the past ... disturbs the institutionalized as things come down... Wahls or vales? Depends upon the twist of tongues as allowed by confined energies that might be considered Shadow ... we know little of the sublime my'nd! Psychic entertainment ... for pre-occupation of the powers beyond ... myths?

Counter fluids are sometimes known as opposing Maases ... providing interference patterns that allows all kinds of explicits ... sort of like canans ... 23 different degrees of magnitude ... all Kohl dead or da'ath in arcana ... mire expression in the san ... beyond the humble whatisn't! Opposing chaos .. like an alternate Hebrew seder, or citi that was lost in translation as a group of thought, vergen on conception, or near thought in an emotional setting ... like saturnia as the void cools ... ath aught Toby warmed?

Sometime difficult to unravel from the woven basis of simplicity into Maas complexity ...

Not4 - you appear to have shared another  view that I (and many others) don't really understand.

My only point was that people all over the world, since before written records were kept, have had feasts, gatherings, festivals, family time, at the times the seasons change.

These are not dependent on government.  Neither are they reserved or specific to, individual religions.

If people following the Christian faith choose to celebrate a particular season with particualr forms of worship or activities it has no meaningful effect on my life and well being.  I see no reason for Christians to be effected by what I choose, or don't choose to do, on any particular day or series of days in the year. I see no reason for people who follow a religion to be uncomfortable when they realise that people following a different religion celebrate in a different way. 

Most importantly - I find it quite puzzling when people following the Christian path go on rants and attempt to bully others to believe and act the same way they do.

The specific 'holiday' commonly called Thanksgiving is not purely Christian event

There is one thing Christians don't share ... greater idioms ... them's alien words, of which something was stated of in the bible knowing that common people wouldn't really put that together ... who really reads into ID as a primary power that has been thoroughtly redacted in evolution to mean almost nothing ... that's a gap-heh?

What we don't know by Roman tradition! Rome antics? When a soul loses it all ...

Love's like that ... must attach to a few clews or your in trouble and attached to something maybe you wished you didn't possess ... 90% roué ... that's like a decree but they change even tho' we don't admit tuit ... a'Jinn essence?

HG,

Want sum ...?

Sort of like combining condensations or word ... then Romans didn't like common wordiness ... they had to be pude own ... literary device'd! Thus the humble my'nd that speaks inthe dark ... the indeterminate sole singularity? Pheshy because it is not well-etude'd ...

That is to say looked into profoundly as proponerously persverse ... assist o'man's propense-ite for creeping ignorance ... a conspiracy of not knowing ... or simply what isn't commonly Gnoest ... or Gnoe'n! Like a noun that's labelled big odds! Fine thing in quantum ranges ...

I'm with kay the curler. (though I disapprove of throwing rocks along the ice as a form of entertainment. Only those resident in the bleaker and more Calvinist areas of Scotland could think that way. probably the same people who eat haggis.)

I grew up in a Christian and observant home. I can't remember thanksgiving ever being celebrated as a Christian holiday - and I see no reason why it should be - any more than Father's Day or Groundhog day.

Giving  thanks is not peculiar to Christianity.

Its a good dae to pardon the turkey ... a self-inflictive sacred passage in the constitution of nos-ite ... such is withheld by the most powerful pres ID'n! Excel as'T? perhaps that was the preliminary to Xlast ... Chi'L'X't ... X'Lax ... qualmed pyres!

And the accountant was freed ... didn't have to account for any Moor ... reverance was deposed ... piled in a heap, dah crap we half to get into tah learn anything from hier Ayrans ... wale karies takes on nue expression ... when you know Greek didn't support a "c" only the Q'n's ... a whole different story of catharsis! Du Q'n a klein ... the lein coming out reflective as suggest by "ka" a dark spirit! One RouéL mire lie in the san ... 

"San"; that's like without the fabric ... the essence of prince in the light is darkness unseen, by those that didn't know the depth of the goan-sons ... in the ignorance of the we'peoples ... them's elves in the eis of the other autocrats Eris, au'Ryes to crats? Naked to those looking up ... subliminally that is ... an alter state to the Eire ...

First you have to know the word to dig IT that could be IC, or IQ dependant upon the tongue that could oppress IT to ið ... that's something else crossing ... as adda'r ... not a divine sum! Some virtual time required for ID to take ... the residue of the primal power that screw up that the conjunctive parse didn't accept ... perhaps a'Jinni twas an unknown! Platonic e-mote ... spelunkin, or cave maqon in GEO Ghia ... souda ear ...

Does anyone know the meaning of holiday to an iron maqon sort?

Kohl dead's attire ...

HG  wodin grasp it, he's happy with the present state of human suffering as an antisocial norm ... pres ID'n paradigm on this side of Ego that many deny as acceptable ... reflection on what was and is, often de Luce anable  in compressed intelligence ... the point of emotions is small thought to say least about what isn't!

We could learn alot from the turkey we serve on thanksgiving. We are thankful on one day and the the turkey is thankful for 364 days.

No arrogance intended. The point is that the particular statutory holidays were recognized and created as religious holidays by government in Canada and the US. This of course recognized that the population was (and still is) predominantly Christian. People may do as they wish in their own minds about that but it will take new laws to make the religious aspect go away.

Do you have some official declaration saying that?   I'm not aware that stat holidays were designated as "Christian" holidays.

Look it up. Stats were designated either civil (bank) or religious. The only reason we started geting the day off, eventually with pay, was because Christianity was the majority while today self entitlement is the new god. Remeber that these holidays  were not what one would call church holidays but government designated so that all could enjoy. Just like today there was much opposition for the oppressed would not be forced to work to keep the 1% happy but the trade off came and the greedy regained the day when Santa took over and turned it into a financial windfall. This obviously had a lot to do with the holidays being passed into law in the first place when gains outweighed losses. Governments aren't exactly godly in nature or deed but a little cash goes a long way in establishing goodwill towards men. They are still working (with little success) on a way to profit from peace on earth.

Looking it up didn't help me much.

Stat holidays are New Year, Canada Day, Labour Day and Christmas Day.

Other holidays are Good Friday, Victoria Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, and Boxing Day.

The official webpage doesn't seem to have the word Christan on it.

Canada Day and Labour Day are in The Bible. If I were a fundamentalist, I could give you a source - probably Leviticus.

Maybe Revelation?

"Maybe Revelation?"

That would be the holiday to the god of consumerism, Black Friday..