Thanksgiving Isn’t for Atheists

It’s that time of year again.

You know, that time of year when the price of a 16-lb turkey — a bird precisely nobody truly enjoys eating — suddenly matters to both politicians trying to make a salient political point and stressed-out grandmas preparing to host potentially riotous dinners.

That time of year when supermarkets, dollar stores, and Hobby Lobby try to convince us that massive tall hats with oversized buckles really are nostalgic, while television networks in collusion with Apple TV+ (a streaming service almost no one pays for) continue to deprive us of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for no good reason. (READ MORE: My Planned Parenthood Turkeys)

That time of year (yes, this phrase is getting a little old) when we drown political debates in whipped cream, pumpkin pie, and far too many hours of football games we find ourselves unexpectedly invested in.

Of course, we all know Thanksgiving isn’t really about any of these superficial things — not the football, not the TV shows we grew up watching, not the political debates with our relatives, or even the price of turkey. It’s really about that awkward thing Mom makes us do before we fill up on the cornucopia that’s spilling out over our table: It is about giving thanks.

Gratitude. It’s a virtue modern men tend to lack.

Perhaps it’s the fault of our comfortable existence — most of us manage to have a roof over our heads, cars in our garages, food we didn’t have to grow ourselves in our refrigerators, and a myriad of tiny items capitalism has persuaded us will make us happier (but don’t). These blessings (and that’s what they are) manage to be so quotidian that we forget to recognize even their existence.

Or maybe it’s the fault of the progressive mindset Enlightenment-era philosophers bequeathed to us via our modern political order — that mindset that tells us that satisfaction with the things our ancestors gave us serves as a roadblock in the eternal march of history toward its utopian conclusion. Satisfied and grateful men rarely make good revolutionaries. (READ MORE: The Myth of the Noble Savage)

More likely, it’s a combination of those things and the rather important fact that practicing gratitude requires that we’re grateful to someone for the things we have — except that in our modern American society, mention of that Someone is a bit politically incorrect.

Just imagine if the most beloved of American holidays was a violation of the sacred principle of separation of church and state. Surely the pilgrims who slaughtered the first turkeys back in 1621 were really just grateful to their Native American neighbors; George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — the fathers of the holiday as we know it — were likely just angling for an excuse to make cranberry sauce.

If Thanksgiving was about giving thanks to God and not about football, wouldn’t that exclude atheists, agnostics, and maybe even those of us Christians who don’t like to think about God except on Easter and Christmas?

Of course, as it turns out, George Washington really wasn’t all that concerned with keeping God out of politics. His Thanksgiving Proclamation reads thus: “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.”

Abraham Lincoln was no more enlightened. He too thought an annual holiday reminding Americans to give thanks to God was an appropriate national exercise: “The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

Sarcasm aside, this is what we, as an American people, so often miss about Thanksgiving.

It’s not sufficient to just feel happy that the current president is not tripping up the stairs of Air Force One or that our political order finally seems to be on track to reverse some of the grave issues plaguing our politics and culture. We can’t just say we’re thankful for the roofs over our heads and the food on our tables.

Thanksgiving should come with a conscious effort to overcome our habitual insensibility to the movement of God in our lives. If we can do it on the last Thursday of November, perhaps we can do it on the last Friday, too, and maybe the days that follow.

READ MORE: Thanksgiving — Beyond the First Feast