Lance Matheson
Mrs. Thomas
English 10b
12/15/13
Thanksgiving
Many American people celebrate Thanksgiving, but very little know why they are celebrating it for. Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks and being grateful for what you have. Whether it is giving to your community or eating with your family, Thanksgiving is a very humble holiday. Thanksgiving dates back to the first settlers and is traditionally an American holiday. This paper will be talking about three main subjects: the origin, purpose, and of course the practices. You might think that you know the facts and the basics about Thanksgiving but this paper will go in depth in those three topics.
To learn about Thanksgiving you need to know where the holiday came from and why it is the holiday we know today. In 1621, the Wampanoag Indians and Plymouth colonists had a fall harvest feast that is one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of Thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln decided that a national Thanksgiving Day should be held each November. Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Since 1863 Thanksgiving Day has been an annual holiday in the United States. Not everyone sees Thanksgiving Day as a happy and a day of giving thanks. Each year since 1970, a group of Native Americans and their supporters have a protest for a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts on Thanksgiving Day. They protest Thanksgiving because it reminder of all the bad things that the settlers did to the Indians in order for us to have a thanksgiving. The settlers killed and pushed the Indians off their land so that they could expand with their territory. American Indian Heritage Day is also looked at this time of the
The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of coming together between Native Americans and the English settlers in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth Colony. Before this first Thanksgiving, the settlers were preparing for the harsh coming winter by gathering food and supplies. With the help of Squanto, a Wampanoag Indian who knew English, the settlers to grow corn and use fish to fertilize the soil for better harvest. Squanto helped the Colonists learn how to fish. This brought the Wampanoag Indians closer to the English settlers. They began to work together, soon the Native Americans offered to help hunt for and with the English settlers. The leader of the Wampanoag, Massasoit and 90 of his mencame for the first Thanksgiving. For three days, the English and the native men, women and children celebrated together playing games, singing songs, dancing and feasting on their harvest. Their meal consisted of corn, shellfish and other roasted meat like duck, goose and venison. This marked the historic and first Thanksgiving holiday of the history of our nation.
Antarctic’s ice melt and accelerating sea level rise, the growing number of large wildfires, intense heat wave shocks, severe drought and blizzards, disrupted and decreased food supply, and extreme storm events are increasing to happen in many areas world wide and these are just some of the consequences of global warming. The fossil fuel we burn for energy coal, natural gas, and oil plus the loss of forests due to disforestation, in the southern hemisphere are all contributors for climate change. In the past three decades, every single year was warmer then the previous year and the warmest 12 years were recorded since 1998. We are overloading our atmosphere with carbon dioxide and trapping the heat and recently, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere reached 400 pmm. Not just environmental issues are rising due to carbon dioxide increase but more and miscellaneous issues are appearing as climate change becomes more severe. For example, regional models and local analyses agree that Mongolia has become noticeably warmer and the climate change effect is damaging their millennial of historic nomadic lifestyle and even came to the peek of extinction. The Mongolian nomadic pastoralists became highly vulnerable to many an unusual climate impacts and extreme temperature fluctuation that have led to inadequate pasture land and loss of enormous number of livestock, often faces hostile environmental conditions that led o entrenched pastoral poverty. This essay focuses on how the climate change impacts the qualitative and quantitative value of indigenous culture and nomadic life style, and how the economy struggles in the magnitudes of massive migration of nomads to urban area while it fails to value t...
Thanksgiving Compare and Contrast Food, Family, and Fun!! Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States, always celebrated on a Thursday in November. There are many different ways people celebrate Thanksgiving. You give thanks and celebrate what you are most thankful for. Thanksgiving is a national holiday that has many different traditions, activities, and foods in different families.
Thanksgiving, traditionally, is a time of gathering families together to express our gratitude for one another over a large roasted turkey. According to the Huffington Post, one fifth of the total 235 million turkeys eaten in the United States are consumed on Thanksgiving Day (1). There are a number of different theories on how the turkey got its name. Some people say that Columbus thought that the land he discovered was connected to India which was known for having large flocks of peacocks. When he saw these strange large birds he thought they were related to the peacock family so he named them Tuka, which means peacock in the language of India (2). Others say that the name came from Native American’s calling them Firkee, which was later adapted to Turkey (2). Another theory is that the birds did not come directly from the New World to England. Instead, they came via merchant ships from the eastern Mediterranean Sea which were called ‘Turkey Merchants’ because a lot of the area was a part of the Turkish Empire at the time. Purchasers of the birds back home in England thought the fowl came from the area so they called them ‘turkey birds’ and soon after just ‘turkeys’ (2).
The first Thanksgiving was a very memorable time in U.S. history. The real meaning of Thanksgiving is to spend time with your family and be thankful for what you have been blessed with.
Moraff,C. The Real History of Thanksgiving." Philadelphia Magazine (2012).p.n.d. Data retrieved from http://www.phillymag.com/news/2012/11/20/dark-origins-thanksgiving/ on May 6,2014.
Every family has their own unique way of spending time together with loved ones only seen during the holidays. In the Stock home, there is only one thing we enjoy doing. Sure, like every other family we have our grand and elaborate dinner, which is composed of all the greatest delicacies my mother and grandmother can whip up. Of course, as is expected, after stuffing ourselves as if this was our last meal the men in the family congregate in the living room. We sit and wait for our tradition to begin by discussing how each of our lives has been unfolding since last Thanksgiving. Finally, the moment arrives, kick off of the first of many Thanksgiving Day football games. There are thousands of fans who watch football with religious devotion. At the Stock house that is not the case. However on Thanksgiving, our eyes glaze over and we rise to the highest of football enthusiasts.
Thanksgiving is undoubtedly a holiday to celebrate family. It also celebrates many other things, as the name suggests. Thanksgiving is a holiday to give thanks for the things that a person has rather than to wish for more things. Accomplishments and shiny cars are not part of the essence of Thanksgiving, as these do not have the inherent humbleness expected of the holiday. This air of humility and frugality, harkening back to the days of the pilgrims and Native Americans, is probably what lead Ellen Goodman to describe the holiday as a suppressing of individualism. However, the rift between individuality and family that Goodman describes in Thanksgiving is not as deep as she makes it seem, and Thanksgiving Day is hardly the only day of the
Earth’s average temperature has increased about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 and another degree could cause even more problems than there already are. Climate change is an important issue to be aware of because it is real and it affects you and the things around you each and every day. Every day animals lose habitats and die because climate change caused there home to burn, or their food sources started to deplete, etc. Along with these, more and more CO2 is being released into the air due to wildfires burning which is causing the atmosphere to heat even more. With the temperature increasing the oceans will become warmer and evaporation and rainfall patterns will change which will affect humans and animals, because we all work together in a system. There are many consequences of climate change like human health issues, and more animals becoming endangered, but the most important consequence is the rising amounts of wildfires.
Climate Change is any substantial change in climate that lasts for an extended period of time. One contributor to current climate change is global warming, which is an increase in Earth’s average temperature. Plants and animal species throughout the world are being affected by rising temperatures. Many plants are flowering earlier now than they once did; animals, such as the yellowbellied marmot, are emerging from hibernation earlier; and many bird and butterfly species are migrating north and breeding earlier in the spring than they did a few decades ago, all because of slight changes in temperature cues. (Shuster)
Climate change is evidenced through shifts in the weather patterns such as winds, humidity and temperatures over certain durations. Natural climate changes occur less frequently and they are triggered by factors related geographical aspects as well as solar radiation. The earth’s movement on the orbit triggers changes in climate causing some areas to have higher temperatures than usual while others are significantly cold depending on the position of the earth on the orbit. The heat form the sun causes changes on the stratospheric ozone and it increases the amount of greenhouse gases. Heat from the oceanic crust also contributes to warming as a result of episodic hydrothermal venting (Liao & Sandeberg, 2012). Volcanic activity also causes a release of certain elements that may block the sun and also contribute to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
all the time. The greenhouse effect is a natural process that keeps the earth at temperatures that
Climate change is caused due to the release of few carbon compounds into the atmosphere, which drastically brought the weather changes all over the world. Climate change is not confined to a single region. It has become an important issue all over the world for the past few years.
The earth is a complex system, which continues to evolve and change. Climate change and global warming are currently popular in the political agenda. But what does “climate” really mean? The difference between weather and climate can be conveyed in a single sentence: “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.” Based on research of the geologic record, we know that climate change has happened throughout Earth's history and at present, ever-increasing evidence points to the roles that humans play in altering Earth systems. The Earth and its atmosphere receive heat energy from the sun; the atmospheric heat budget of the Earth depends on the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing radiation from the planet; which has been constant over the last few thousand years. However present evidence seems to suggest that the recent increase in temperature has been brought about by pollution of the atmosphere, in particular the release of huge amounts of carbon dioxide, mostly through Anthropogenic Forcing (human activity) and other various internal and external factors. I...
According to the Canada’s Action on Climate Change, Climate change is a long-term shift in weather conditions identified by changes in temperature, precipitation, winds, and other indicators. Climate change can involve both changes in average conditions and changes in variability, including, for example, extreme events. Climate change is one of the biggest crisis in the earth. It will cause a huge damage to the eco-system and human. We are the victims of the climate change. However, we are the one who cause the climate change.