Thanksgiving: America’s Forgotten Religious Holiday

Authored by J.T. Young via RealClearReligion,

Thanksgiving is America’s forgotten religious holiday. Not simply a holiday, it was meant to be a true holy day. That it is forgotten as such runs counter to the original Thanksgiving. It also runs counter to logic. And it also runs right into those who seek to imbue it with their own cultural causes.

America has many holidays that have nothing to do with “holy days,” from whence the word came. Labor Day is a holiday but not a holy day. Arbor Day is on the calendar but hardly holy — perhaps, unless you are a druid. 

“Holiday” has become just a secularized term for a day when many break from their routines. However, Thanksgiving is one holiday that truly is a holy day — or at least it was to the Pilgrims who held the first one. To them, Thanksgiving was utterly religious. 

That Thanksgiving was a religious expression to the Pilgrims is hardly surprising. After all, they came to the New World for religious purposes (“Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith” as the Mayflower Compact stated): freedom of religion — not freedom from religion, as so many today seek to recast it. 

The Pilgrims suffered greatly on their ocean voyage over and had to turn back twice. Then, they landed at the wrong place. Next, they faced a mutiny as they waited to come ashore; the response to this impending revolt was the Mayflower Compact, America’s first act of independent governance. They suffered no less once ashore, with barely half surviving the first year: 52 of the 102 who had set sail on the Mayflower. 

However, despite their suffering, like Job, they did not forsake God. And like Job, those who survived saw themselves blessed; for their survival they gave thanks — hence, thanksgiving. 

The Pilgrims had no doubt as to whom they were giving thanks: God. Their action of thanks was to them as obvious as their longed-for connection. The two were inseparable, just as they themselves sought to be to God.

The Pilgrims’ directing of thanks to God made perfect sense to them. When you think about it, it also makes sense logically: We direct thanks to someone. Thanking inanimate objects or circumstances makes no sense. You direct thanks to someone who can understand it, who welcomes it, who acknowledges it. You do not write thank-you notes to no one; you do not address them to “Occupant” or “Current Resident” when you send them. As for the Pilgrims, they had no doubt to whom they were giving thanks or that their thanks would be heard. 

That was all over four hundred years ago. In those four centuries, America has secularized the Pilgrims’ holy day as we have secularized so much else. All too often today, Thanksgiving is an occasion for over-indulging and inactivity (something in which there is no little irony because, to the Pilgrims, gluttony and sloth were sins).

There is also no little sadness in this secularization. We are the poorer for it. Thanksgiving is the emptier for it. And being emptied, it is open to being filled with other things.  

Like so many other things, Thanksgiving is now a target for the cultural contrarians who live to loathe anything and everything that is not of their own creation. Do a quick internet search and you will find a long list of woke alternatives to Thanksgiving.

Our secularization is somewhat to blame for this. Without content, Thanksgiving is ripe for such picking — or nitpicking. Without a core, people fill it up, like stuffing into a turkey. 

Yet Thanksgiving has a core. It has always had one — even if we forget or choose to reject it. Logic says it must have one. We cannot simply be thankful to luck; we can be happy, but we cannot be grateful. Gratitude must be directed to someone. 

Thanksgiving is a holiday in name and in fact. It is our forgotten holy day because we have forgotten to whom we are grateful. The Pilgrims did not forget, which is why they were able to endure so much and survive. 

It is because we have forgotten that we are able to endure so little. For us, there is no moment beyond the “here and now.” To us, nothing is more important than “us”; so, all our moments must be pleasant ones or they are unendurable. 

A holiday that is about no more than “us” is empty: ephemeral, as we are. A little gratitude in our Thanksgiving is a good thing. A better thing.  A little more God — and a little less “us” — in it would be better still.