From the Modesto (CA) Bee 11/24/05: (We are not all liberal nuts out here)
Thanksgiving: A Christian holiday
Congress set Dec. 18, 1777, as a day of thanksgiving on which the American people "may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor" and on which they might "join the penitent confession of their manifold sins ... that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance."
Congress recommended that Americans petition God "to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
I guess the Founding Fathers forgot they wanted separation of church and state when they passed this proclamation. This Thanksgiving I will give thanks to God for his divine intervention on behalf of this great Christian nation.
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
JEFF McCLINTICK
Modesto, CA
Man, what a bunch of confused deists those founding fathers were-- invoking Jesus' name and everything.......
One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting. In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.
Burp! Please pass the gravy.....