That's what my wife asked when I told her about the conservative effort to "bring God back into Thanksgiving. As always, Mary is right. The list of right-wingers arguing that we're wrong about Thanksgiving gets longer every day. Yesterday, Newt Gingrich claimed that "historically, Thanksgiving is about renewing the bond between Americans and their Creator. It's a time when we are reminded that our rights come from God and that we have responsibilities to God as free citizens." (Gingrich, Winning the Future, Nov. 20, 2007) Given the association of Thanksgiving with the harvest, it would probably be more accurate to say that Thanksgiving used to be about forgiving god more than thanking him. It's the same with harvest festivals all over the world. Of course, there is the conventional "thanking" of god for the blessings of the harvest. Who doesn't know the religious routines of their society? But people primarily congratulated themselves for bringing in the harvest after long summers and autumns of backbreaking labor and constant struggling against droughts, insects, parasites, floods, frost, heat, and the other burdens of nature. And who brought about all of those difficulties? It was God!!! For sincere Christians like the Pilgrims, the difficulty of producing food begins with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Genesis and it's always been believed that god punished human sin by bringing about the natural disasters that traditionally made farming so difficult. That's why harvest festivals like Thanksgiving always feature a big banquet. Much of what Thanksgiving dinner celebrates is the triumph of people over god or the gods and humankind's reconciliation with divinity at the moment of victory over nature. Much of what Thanksgiving was about the generosity of spirit in sharing food and other bounties of the season, and part of that generosity is extended to god as well. It's kind of touching in a way. Of course, now that the United States is no longer an agricultural society, the holiday of Thanksgiving is even less connected with gratitude toward the Christian god than it ever was. My wife and I are in our fifties and neither of us have heard about god in relation to Thanksgiving outside the forgettable conventions of saying grace. To the contrary, Thanksgiving was always about taking time off from work, relaxing, enjoying family and getting ready for the even bigger holiday blow-out of Christmas. And that's the way it should be. As for god, I don't believe in a god or any other kind of divine presence. But if there is anything divine in the world, I'll be in a very forgiving mood after dinner.

Good points and interesting post.

Most cultures that I am familiar with have some sort of "thanking" involved for food, either to an animal totem or anthropomorphised God. Our current harvest festival is likely no different in feeling and purpose than one in Syria ten thousand years ago or even one after successful hunts and smoking of winter meat outside the Alta Mira cave thirty thousand years ago.

Consciousness, the ability to remember times of little food, would motivate happiness at times of enough food. The Serpent is the father of Thanksgiving. Wonder what the Newter would say about that?

As President, on October 3rd 1789, George Washington stated the following proclamation and created the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America:

“ Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Link

This was precisely the kind of Thanksgiving that everyone was familiar with at the time, as being part of the British tradition of proclaiming Thanksgivings on occasions of significance to the state. And of course God is there - just as He was in the British Thanksgivings. There is nothing distinctively "American" about Washington's proclamation.

sparling:

This was precisely the kind of Thanksgiving that everyone was familiar with at the time, as being part of the British tradition of proclaiming Thanksgivings on occasions of significance to the state. And of course God is there - just as He was in the British Thanksgivings. There is nothing distinctively "American" about Washington's proclamation.

LOL..except it was done in America by an American President. That is a lot of difference.

Read the subject's question: When Did GOD Come Into Thanksgiving? Not When Did Thanksgiving Become AMERICAN?

Besides the fact that the date Washington gave this address was given 13 years AFTER our America's declaration of independence from England. Who gives a crap where the tradition originated? Worship of the Judeo-Christian God originated in Israel. By your logic, doesn't that make Thanksgiving more JEWISH than British??

The holiday has, unmistakeably, a religious connection. That simply can't be denied. The Pilgrims were Puritans, extremist Protestants who couldn't get along with the mandated Church of England and fled efforts to homogenize them into its mainstream. They gave thanks with prayer and established the tradition that became the holiday of Thanksgiving.

But as you say, times have changed, and it should be a holiday for ALL Americans, one in which EVERYONE can give thanks as they see fit - whether Jew or Gentile, Hindu or Catholic, atheist or Wiccan.

It's unfortunate that some of the more bigoted, politically-motivated Christians choose to try to claim the holiday as their own, thereby dividing instead of uniting Americans. Seems to be part of their agenda nowadays, sadly...

...do you or do you not agree that Thanksgiving is a day in which ANYONE can give thanks as they see fit, and that that's as true of atheists, Jews, Hindus and Wiccans as it is for Christians?

That's really the heart of the matter here, isn't it? Not what Deist George Washington thought the day should be about.

His address was FULL of Christian context as I detailed in a previous post. Apart from the context, I agree that everyone has the right in this country to thank whomever they please, however they please. I just resent people telling me that Thanksgiving is not, nor never was "Christian" or "religious" in any way.

The fact that I alone thank my Christian Lord on that day, makes it a Christian holiday...at least for me. To say the day is not a Christian day of thanks, is tantamount to suggesting that I'm either not Christian, or that my God doesn't exist.

On those, I say "FEH!"

Certainly I accept your point that YOUR observance was Christian, and yes, also for the Pilgrims. Of course, assuming the "Disneyfied" history of that occasion is remotely accurate, the First Nations guests certainly were offering their thanks elsewhere.

You can assume that George Washington intended the day to be a Christian celebration, but I think he was a bit more inclusive than that.

This comment from George Washington and Religion seems applicable:

Washington used generic terms with his public requests for divine assistance, to the extent that his personal denomination must be classified as "unknown." That vagueness has not stopped Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Unitarian Universalists from claiming him as a member, and has invited others to identity him as a Deist. Washington was a man dedicated to creating national unity, not an exclusionist seeking to identify and select those with correct beliefs for reward in this life or the next.

Washington made clear that he would accept "Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists."

Interestingly, the proclamation itself was recommended by Congress specifically to offer thanks for the Constitution. See Papers of George Washington

Rather than the born-again Christian your post would have wished him to be?

Hey, if you want to consider Thanksgiving your own personal "Christian" holiday, be my guest. As I've said, people should be thankful in any way they wish.

But then, for you to proclaim that it's a "Christian day of thanks" is for you to try to take the day for yourself, as a Christian. ANd that's what I find annoying. You may want to be a Christian and believe your God exists, but I don't have to.

...that's a keeper. Like many of the Founders, Washington clearly was a uniter who thought that people's faith should be their own damned business.

Wish more would follow his example...

Clear evidence of his personal theology is lacking, even on his deathbed when he died a "death of civility" without expressions of Christian hope. His failure to document beliefs in conventional dogma, such as a life after death, is a clue that he may not qualify as a conventional Christian. Instead, Washington may be closer to a "warm deist" than a standard Anglican in colonial Virginia.

His address was FULL of Christian context as I detailed in a previous post.

Of course. His time and his demographic were full of Christian context. To a Christian, all of life is, or should be (theoretically), a Christian act.

I just resent people telling me that Thanksgiving is not, nor never was "Christian" or "religious" in any way.

But because it's not built around the birth, death, resurrection, etc. of any deity--because the event it commemorates (correctly or not) was not specifically a religious one--it's not religious in the way that Christmas and Easter are. Mere gratitude is not a strictly religious--to say nothing of strictly Christian--characteristic.

The fact that I alone thank my Christian Lord on that day, makes it a Christian holiday...at least for me.

Indeed! But that sort of changes your whole theory on the holiday. It's not that it's a religious holiday; it's that your spirit of gratitude--like Washington's--arises from a religious impulse.

To say the day is not a Christian day of thanks, is tantamount to suggesting that I'm either not Christian, or that my God doesn't exist.

Then to say that it's not a Buddhist day of thanks is tantamount to suggesting that I'm either not a Buddhist, or that the mystic law of cause and effect doesn't exist. And that wouldn't really be cricket, would it?

You pinkos get ever-more acrid in your attacks on wholesomeness, Goodness and everything about America that makes her America the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Just who does a great nation owe its thanks to? It owns its thanks to The Almighty Who Ordians All Things.

Dd