Thanksgiving was created, I think it must be said, as a religious holiday. Yet, not being a religious sort, I still find Thanksgiving to be one of the best holidays. The direction of my thanks is, perhaps, more ambiguous, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am thankful for the fact of creation, for having been born in a bountiful place and time, for a good family and for a great deal more. Regardless of whether your thanks is going to a deity, to a particular individual, or to no specific person at all; I think one of the primary benefits of giving thanks is that you stop taking things for granted. It is also an act of humility, a recognition that you are not solely responsible for all that you have. You owe a great deal of what you have and who you are to forces outside of your control. Appreciation and humility are valuable characteristics in a person, and a day devoted to their cultivation is a good one.
And, of course, there is the tremendous amount of good food, time off work, time spent with family and friends, and, with some luck, football. (Even if it is the Lions and the Cowboys.) My plan, as always, is to wallow in dark meat and mashed potatoes. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I don’t want to be picking nits here, but your statement, “Thanksgiving was created, I think it must be said, as a religious holiday,” may be inaccurate. Having done a little research lately on that topic, I am convinced that the first Thanksgiving was not a religious event.
They brought with them the custom of an autumn secular harvest celebration as well as a Puritan religious Thanksgiving holy day. These two events were totally separate and independent in their minds. A secular celebration of the harvest was an annual event which would of course include the giving of religious thanks to their god, but was not thought of by them as religious in nature. A true Day of Thanksgiving was a completely separate observance.
When the Puritans rejected the Medieval ecclesiastical calendar of Christmas, Easter and Saint’s days, they submitted three allowable holy days: The Sabbath, the Day of Humiliation and Fasting, and the Day of Thanksgiving and Praise. The latter two were never held on a regular basis but only in direct response to what they termed, Providence. When things went well, signaling their god’s pleasure with their community, a declaration of observance of a Day of Thanksgiving in praise was ordered. But when the deity’s displeasure was evident and events were unfortunate, it was an indication that the community should repent and a Day of Fasting and Humiliation was proclaimed. The Day of Thanksgiving and Praise was often concluded with a feast, while the fast days saw voluntary privation.
The harvest celebration of autumn, 1621, the model for our modern observance, was not proclaimed by the church hierarchy as a religious observance, and so was neither a fast day nor a thanksgiving day in the eyes of the Pilgrims. Rather it was a secular celebration which included games, recreations, three days of feasting and Indian guests. It would have been unthinkable to have these things as part of a religious Thanksgiving. The actual first declared Day of Thanksgiving and Praise occurred in 1623, after a providential rain shower saved the colony’s failing crops.
It was only in the 19th century, when looking back for a precedent for the then modern observance of Thanksgiving which had evolved after the decline of Puritanism, that people discovered this first harvest celebration and dubbed it the “First Thanksgiving.” They were not interested in what that festival meant to the Pilgrims; they were concerned with what it could mean to Victorians like themselves.