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Thanksgiving Rant

November 21st, 2007 No comments

The other day, when talking with a coworker, I mentioned that my parents are planning to come up for our Thanksgiving celebration. This woman (not exactly a Bible thumper herself) says, “But I thought you were Pagan.”

I gaped at the ignorance of her comment and just shook my head. How can a born and bred American citizen come up not knowing what Thanksgiving is truly about?

Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday. At least not from where I sit. When I was growing up and being taught about Thanksgiving, it was a secular school that taught me, not the church. I learned about it from a secular history book, not the Bible. And not once in my history book did it mention the Christian god pertaining to Thanksgiving.

The American version of [[Thanksgiving]] is a celebration that originated with the Native Americans and the British colonists who sat down together in peace to thank their respective deities and each other for the blessings they’d received and for each other. Native Americans, at the time, according to history had no clue who Christ or the Christian god were. Eventually, that changed. But the first Thanksgiving dinner had nothing to do with religion, race or creed. It was one moment in history where everyone was truly equal at the table no matter who they were.

Thanksgiving is a patriotic holiday in my eyes. A family holiday. A time for us to get together and celebrate each other. To celebrate all the things we’ve been given in life, whether we believe some deity gave us those things or we worked hard for them. Thanksgiving is everyone’s holiday. That’s why I love it so much.

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