Commentary
Thanksgiving was a holiday born from American history. It’s a uniquely American celebration that virtually all Americans participate in.
In 1621, it was celebrated in Massachusetts by the pilgrims. Some say there were earlier celebrations in other colonies, but this is the one we remember. After a difficult start with their new colony, a feast of thanksgiving was proclaimed by the pilgrims. Many people in the colonies continued similar annual feasts in the fall until the Revolutionary War.
The Continental Congress made it an official feast in 1777. It was declared an official holiday twice more, and most people all over the United States celebrated an annual Thanksgiving in November well into the 20th century.
The day we now celebrate as Thanksgiving was declared in 1941 by an official proclamation by Congress. It has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November ever since.
Difficult to Politicize
It’s hard to politicize this holiday. I think the officials of the Obama regime would have liked to have done so during their attempts to sell their newly passed health care plan. They tried to ruin Christmas with the infamous “pajama boy” ad, which featured a boy coming home for the holidays. He was supposed to drink hot chocolate, wear pajamas, and try to convince parents of just how good Obamacare was.
Thanksgiving was spared.
For now.
Unfortunately, the left won’t stop its constant stream of negativity about our country’s traditions. All of them. No matter how good the traditions, the left wants to tear them down.
Including Thanksgiving.
It’s a cultural form of jihad. Destroy the past, and you control the future, or so said George Orwell in the book “1984.” There is no lack of trying on the part of the left when it comes to uprooting our cultural traditions.
Fortunately, Thanksgiving is a pretty tough bird to ruin.
Sure, they can rant about how the colonists took everything from Native Americans. Unfortunately for the left, the story of the first Thanksgiving was one in which colonists and natives celebrated and gave thanks together. For days. Trust me, many on the left would love to make it about the imperialism of the white colonists. They would also like to make it about any number of the darker things in life.
Don’t let them.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to know that so many of our citizens have taken up the leftist lies of socialism. It’s hard enough to watch so many social trends spiraling downward, which is why Thanksgiving is more important than ever.
Positive Nature of Americans
If nothing else, the inherently positive nature of the American dream is right out front in the Thanksgiving story. The pilgrims gave thanks for the hard times they had experienced. They gave thanks for the good times that had brought them through. They gave thanks they had a future that would be free from the old ways they had escaped. The future was God’s gift to them, forever filled with hope.
Likewise for us. Despite the daunting giants of negativity that stalk our land, we can give thanks that God has brought us through once again. We can be thankful we are once more given the opportunity to help America fulfill its promise. We are in good times economically for the first time in more than a decade. God is, if nothing else, giving us a time of prosperity, a time to forge positive plans and goals for now and the future.
We can give thanks for a president who cares about the future of all in our country. Thanks for a president who really wants to see a better America. One who has proven to be smarter than our enemies, smarter than those who would enslave us to the collective.
Consider those heroes who faced darker times and prevailed—George Washington at Valley Forge when all looked lost and the harsh winter dragged on. He prevailed, and our country was born.
Consider President Abraham Lincoln’s difficulties as the country hurtled toward Civil War. Consider what he and the entire country endured as violence broke out, as the war dragged on. The hundreds of thousands of dead, the slaughter of fathers, sons, and brothers. Yet the dream of America prevailed.
Remember the World War II generation as they fought evil in the Pacific and in Europe. The darkness was not to prevail.
So many times, our country could have packed it in and given up—the Soviet threat, with all its ugliness, seemed unstoppable. Yet we prevailed. Their terrible ideology failed. Their leadership failed, and their ideology of slavery was dealt a huge setback.
It is true that our own leadership has brought us through a wilderness of sorts. Our elites have forgotten the goodness of our history, the goodness of freedom, the greatness America once held. As one of our Democratic Party leaders said recently, America was never that great.
Which is why these elites will fail.
They forget to be thankful for all we have. They forget the strength of freedom. They forget the creative and positive engine of free enterprise. They forget they live in the greatest country in the world. They forget to celebrate a thankful life. They choose to dwell on, and in, the negatives they have come to believe about us and our country.
Much to their shame, they made up more than a few of these negative narratives.
Do not succumb to the pessimism of our elites. Do not fall prey to their stupidity. Fight them and their insane ideas while you have breath. They deserve to be fought, and they deserve to be defeated. Their ideas are juvenile, their standards are nonexistent, and their track record of success is abysmal.
The dark leftist dystopia will not prevail. God did not give us one more chance to make America great again to fail. As dark as things look, it was darker during the Revolutionary War, darker during the Civil War, darker during World War II.
We can see these as examples for us, that once again goodness will prevail. Freedom will ring out across our land in the best of ways again. Our children and grandchildren will want to return to a compelling future of what made us great. Return to those positive traits that filled the first Thanksgiving—family, friends, and the celebration of life.
Take this holiday time to enjoy what life has given you. Don’t be concerned that the left is annoyed by our celebration.
Stay Positive and Celebrate
Take Thanksgiving in the best of ways, rejoicing with family and friends. Laugh, love, and be grateful that we have such a time as this. Be thankful we have this opportunity to live in freedom. Be thankful we have this opportunity to fight the forces of evil and the strength to do so.
Be thankful we have an outsider president who cares about the future of freedom. Be thankful that we have the grace to be together with others that care to embrace liberty.
Take the time to rededicate lives to great purpose. Take the time to gather strength from this great feast that stands for such unique American traits.
Make Thanksgiving an open door to a great future. Open your hearts to God’s vision of liberty and fullness. Have a great celebration!
David Prentice is a writer and novelist from the Midwest.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
