Go Ahead...Ask About The Great Pumpkin. I Dare You.

In a bit of Revisionist History, the Pilgrims were never invited to Thanksgiving, but simply crashed the Native Americans’ harvest party

Awe geeze....this is how you're spending our Friday?

Through fun and whimsical education?  Yes it is.

Nobody's learning anything, other than how to get sued.  

Many of you know the story of Thanksgiving as it's taught in schools.  Of course, you've also been told the story of Christopher Columbus as it's taught in schools, and that's total nonsense, too.  (Aristotle had discovered that the world was round 2000 years before Columbus sailed.  That's exacerbated by the fact that 1492 was the year the Globe was invented, so that whole "proving the world was round thing is complete and total bunk.)  So, we all "know" the story of how the Patuxet tribe of Native Americans helped the pilgrims through their first winter in the new world, showed them how to plant corn and shovel snow off the driveway and celebrated the first Thanksgiving.  

Well, the real story of that particular Harvest Festival goes back a few more years to 1601, when the Patuxet tribe celebrated the first "Cornapalooza."  This festival, incidentally, is where all of the "___apalooza" festivals get their name to this day.  It was a big party where people would eat stupid amounts of food and carve their faces into pumpkins.  A quintessential American holiday if there ever was one. 

Shortly after the first Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the first colonial college was set up so the more grown-up boys (Sorry, girls) could learn crafts like leather-working, metal-working, and cow-working.  With every college comes the inevitable fraternity presence, and the first Frat in the new world, "Alpha Alpha Alpha," was chartered within 2 months.  One day, several of the fraternity brothers were out in the woods and saw a Native American named "Tisquantum" walking around with a carved pumpkin face over his head.  They called out to him "Hey Squanto!" (which is where the Americanized version of his name comes from), and proceeded to beat him up and take his pumpkin for the purpose of putting it over their own heads, filling it with mead and drinking their way out.  

A great many gourdfulls of mead later, the frat brothers found their way to the Patuxet Cornapalooza tables.  They barged their way in, sat down, and devoured enough food to make themselves a little sick, watched the football game, then passed out in the turkey coop with feathers drawn on their faces in Sharpie.  When they awake the following morning, they immediately told the rest of the Pilgrim settlement of the giant party they were missing over at the Patuxet's house.  Both peoples celebrated Cornapalooza together, and the Native Americans gave Thanks when the Pilgrims finally left. Every year after that, the Native Americans celebrated the day that the Pilgrims finally left them alone and stopped eating all their food.  The day was made a national holiday somewhere in the 1870s. 

Now that's taken care of, Jeremy Is In The Office will be out of the office all next week while Jeremy does some ridiculous great circle tour of the Northeast US.  We hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving and we'll return on monday, November 26th with all new crap.  We know you're looking forward to it.