Beard of the Day
The Origins of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. It is a convoluted, weird interpretation of something that didn’t really happen in American history. It’s clear what has actually happened, and I will recount the sequence of events here.
70’s Big is an idea that started in early 2009 and developed into a website by September of the same year. Currently the site easily averages over 3,000 visitors a day. Instead of being concerned with number of readers, 70’s Big is more concerned with establishing a paradigm. Burly men and strong women go forth and take on risks and difficult challenges with fervor in their hearts. They learn this ability through the grueling battles with steel, iron, and gravity. Guts and courage are built through toil; they don’t simply appear at birth.
Alas! Food becomes an important part of this journey of self realization. It is fuel for the body so that the mind can push through each lesson. A man requires a hearty bounty, not egg whites and squash. And thus Thanksgiving was born.
“Bah! Thanksgiving hath endured for centuries; how hath 70’s Big birthed the Great Giving of Thanks?” A valid question, yet the reality is that Thanksgiving has not always existed. There was a time in an alternate universe in which Thanksgiving did not exist while all other things remained constant. The idea of 70’s Big was infectious upon the world as it grew into a dominant way of thinking. Society no longer bitched about being offended and the fame of celebrities waned to that of my big toe. It was a wonderful society that lived through the ages. Several millenia from now, the governing body decided to honor the inception of its way of thinking. Their solution: travel back in time and establish a holiday in which eating a hearty, complete meal was emphasized and glorified. The governing body sent their agents back in time to manipulate such a holiday. In a vain attempt to cloak their true identity, the time travelers showed up in black pilgrim costumes while others showed up as bare skinned Indians. The ruse worked to perfection because the public ate it up, and the Thanksgiving Feast was born.
70’s Big has been preceded by decades of proper eating, a testament to proper planning by the Time Travelers to ensure that skinny people have experienced good eating habits before starting their quest to 70’s Big. “Hard gainers” no longer have shitty excuses as to why they can’t gain weight, because they have done it correctly on at least one day of every year of their lives! Manliness is a choice, and Thanksgiving is as good a place as any to start.
The Thanksgiving Eating Challenge
Now that we have the origin of Thanksgiving out of the way, we can focus on the readers who have chosen Manliness over helplessness; Boldness over cowardliness; and strong over weak. I challenge all of you to an eating contest. We can’t really argue over subjective interpretations of how much you “actually ate”, so instead we’ll measure it by weight gained. You will need to weigh yourself before your feast, and then again after your feast (if you feast throughout the day, then weigh yourself at the end). You will also need to wear the same clothes throughout the day (i.e. wear the same stuff in your pre/post weighing). This would be a proper time to wear your 70’s Big shirt, since it’s our national holiday. Whoever gains the most weight will win a t-shirt. We are probably going to need video or picture evidence of your weigh-ins. This will cut back on cheating, even though it can still happen — don’t be a jackass. On Thanksgiving Day we’ll post our results to the comments.
Good luck to you all, and don’t forget to give thanks to the Time Travelers.