How did you enjoy your Thursday mourning? No, that’s not a typo, but exactly how some people today characterize our Thanksgiving observance.
At a website called Common Dreams, one Krissy Stroop, a real party poop, wrote on Thanksgiving Day itself that in “a period of rising nationalism, teaching American schoolchildren to play parts in an imperialist and whitewashed pageantry is deeply troubling”; she further complained that the holiday “is also inescapably associated with capitalism.” Even more blunt is the title “THANKSGIVING: A Day of Mourning,” found at AmericanIndianSource.com and penned by a man called Roy Cook (one would think his name should be Talking Bull). It’s all part of a larger effort by woke-wet-blanket holiday haters to effect a “Year Zero” erasure of American observances and Holy Days.
Now, never mind that all this is a bit like waiting for a special day honoring an octogenarian’s lifetime devotion to a certain field to give a speech about how crummy he is. The timing itself could be considered a hostile act; in fairness, though, the occasion of events does inspire talk about them. If only these wet blankets knew what they were talking about.
Speaking of this confusion, American Thinker’s Eric Utter provided a good example Wednesday, writing:
The Pitt News Editorial Board recently published an article titled “It’s OK to not like Thanksgiving,” in which it recommended that readers “redefine” what Thanksgiving means to them. That’s odd — the term seems perfectly clear to me. Nevertheless, the editorial claimed that “Thanksgiving is a weird holiday as is” and asserted that the holiday is “forced upon” students. It added, “We are celebrating the genocide of the Wampanoag tribe by eating with our families and saying what we’re thankful for.”
Who hasn’t sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner with his loved ones, bowed his head, and earnestly prayed: “Dear Lord, we thank thee for the turkey and fixings, football, all our blessings, and especially for the genocide of the Wampanoag tribe“? Are the Pitt News Editorial Board members clinically insane or just tragically woke?
The answer is that, for one thing, they’re tragically sheep-like. Almost never mentioned is how pathetically unintellectual all this is. The civilization destroyers may fancy themselves as non-conformists, as iconoclasts (or, at least, they would if they actually knew the word), as rebels, but they’re nothing of the sort. Their odd version of nonconformity is conforming to the most fashionable, pseudo-elite-endorsed and -enforced dogma. A bit like a rebellious teen with permissive parents who gets a tattoo because all his friends are getting tattoos, they’re about as original as an atavistic grunt or a kick in the head.
Speaking of rebellion, what would really qualify is if the Pitt News Editorial Board published an article titled “It’s OK to not like Critical Race Theory,” “It’s OK to not like ‘transgenderism,’” “It’s OK to not like George Floyd,” or “It’s OK to not like Howard Zinn history.” But the Pitt News Editorial Board then wouldn’t be the Pitt News Editorial Board — at least not for long. A cancelin’ would be a’-comin’ to town.
The point here isn’t about double standards or hypocrisy, but inevitability. When people erase their holidays, heroes, and history, they don’t end up without holidays, heroes, and history any more than someone who scraps his diet stops eating. They end up with new holidays, heroes, and history.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, societies will have these things, along with traditions, social codes, and conventions; it’s just a matter of what they’ll be. Thus have our toppled statues been replaced with depictions of, or recognition of, people such as crack-using mayor Marion Barry, pederast Harvey Milk, or criminal George Floyd; our holidays by events such as “Indigenous People’s Day”; and our history by 1619 Project-like revisionism. Unsaid by the more Machiavellian civilization destroyers, however, is that they tear down so they can build anew — a world in their own image.
As for the Pitt editorialists’ recommendation “that readers ‘redefine’ what Thanksgiving means to them,” a fashionable appeal in an age so relativistic that people make everything relative to themselves, here’s a truly radical idea:
Let’s recognize what the observance actually means.
When George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1789, he stated that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor…. 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.” He mentioned nothing about pilgrims or Indians.
On this note, Eleanor Roosevelt once stated, “Great Minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” Yet perhaps the greatest minds discuss God. If we hadn’t indulged a “separation of church and state” (not in the Constitution) fantasy that God must be ousted from school and the public square generally, perhaps children would know Thanksgiving’s true meaning. Instead, we’re reduced to talking about the lesser part of its story, about people: the pilgrims and Indians.
That is, when we’re not now talking about the colonizers, slave masters, and (alleged) genocidal maniacs. Is it any wonder a poll found that a shrinking number of Americans consider Thanksgiving one of our “nation’s most important holidays”?
Yet if America was built on colonization, slavery, and not-really-genocide simply because those things to an extent occurred, what nation wasn’t? It’s a cynical, nihilistic — and, dare I say, satanic — view of the world. And maybe if these civilization-destroyers bowed down to God, they’d be grateful enough to count their blessings and not their curses, the latter of which are often imaginary, anyway.
They’d be happier, too, as “Thanks are the highest form of thought,” to quote G.K. Chesterton. Yet without God, who is there to thank?
Oh, yeah, there’s always government.
