Not long ago, the holiday of Thanksgiving was brought up in an email with one of my Catholic correspondents. Seeing as it's only a few days away, now would be a good time to talk about it.
This gentleman assured me that Thanksgiving was a Protestant holiday. His reasoning was that, since the First Thanksgiving was celebrated to give thanks to God by a predominantly Puritan settlement, it was therefore a Protestant holiday.
There are a few things wrong with this line of thinking.
First of all, the First Thanksgiving might well have been (in the minds of many) a thank-you to God. But more significantly, it was a thank-you to the native peoples who showed the settlers how to survive the harsh Eastern winters. The natives sure weren't Christians, Protestant or otherwise. And yet, they were an integral part of the celebration.
Secondly, there was no recurring holiday of Thanksgiving at that time, or for a long time thereafter. Our earliest Presidents would decide, from one year to the next, whether there would be an observed day of Thanksgiving. Many said yes, and many said no. It was hardly an entrenched celebration for anyone.
It wasn't until 1827 that a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book as well as Ladies Magazine, began a crusade to have Thanksgiving proclaimed a national holiday. In her book, Northwood, she said, "We have too few holidays. Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people...as an exponent of our Republican institutions." She continued to badger representatives and editorialize for years and years. Most of her adult life, in fact. Finally, 36 years later in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday, largely to commemorate victory in Gettysburg. This was the bloodiest battle Americans had ever waged, and the nation, Lincoln felt, needed something to ease the hearts of the people.
This doesn't really sound like a religious observance, does it? Especially when you consider that Lincoln wasn't a Christian. He would hardly have been one to put in place a Christian holiday.
But the most blatantly obvious thing wrong with my acquaintance's observation is this: He is basing today's holiday upon the very first celebration of Thanksgiving, labeling it Protestant because of the Puritans. This is akin to saying that Christmas is a pagan holiday because it was stolen from pagan sources, such as the cult of Mithras (which celebrated the birth of Mithras on December 25).
Times change, and holidays change with them. Today, December 25 is a Christian holiday, no matter what it once was in some parts of the world. Likewise, whether or not Thanksgiving began as a religious observance, today it is a firmly entrenched secular holiday in celebration of American excess.
And there you have it. Now pass the cranberry sauce.
