Keeping the Three Thanksgivings Together

Looking at the history of American Thanksgiving, we can identify three stages: Thanksgiving as a religious feast, as a family feast, and as a commercial feast.

Thanksgiving began as a religious feast, a harvest gathering by the Pilgrims to give thanks to God (and their Native American helpers) for their survival. Barely half of the party that arrived off the barren Massachusetts coast in 1620 in the middle of winter survived; that was enough to give thanks for. That they encountered a local tribe willing to help them was a further blessing. The Bible stresses the importance of gratitude (e.g., the Parable of the Ten Lepers). Gratitude is both what we creatures owe our Creator, especially because it makes us aware of our dependence on that Creator and disabuses us of a false sense of entitlement.

In the 19th century, Thanksgiving turned into a family gathering, “over the river and through the woods…” Giving thanks moved from a communal gathering to a family circle. In a world where the harvest still strongly influenced a lardy or lean winter, family thanksgiving was significant. In a culture where life was still evidently fragile, in which there was child mortality and no antibiotics, one didn’t take one’s blessings for granted. That was true even if, in the individual faith milieu of American Protestantism (especially after the collapse of New England Puritanism), thanksgiving was somewhat privatized into the family. Perhaps our Jewish brethren have a lesson to teach us: the celebration of Sabbath is a synagogue event, but it is also a domestic event, a family meal. The two mutually reinforce each other.

The last phase of Thanksgiving transformation was the commercial: Thanksgiving as bookend to Christmas, the interim being the “holiday shopping season.” This phase is somewhat modern, if by “modern” in this case one means about 85 years old. Yes, Thanksgiving was commercialized by FDR. In his era, Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of November, which, in 1939, was November 30. FDR moved it back a week to November 23 to extend the Christmas shopping season (and help boost his still fragile economic recovery). Congress statutorily ratified that practice in 1941. In later times, the days after Thanksgiving turned into shopping events: Black Friday, Local Saturday, Cyber Monday.

In principle, these three Thanksgivings can be compatible, provided we keep them in proper order.

God comes first, but He’s become the most anemic element. That shift had already begun in the 19th century, with the transition from a communal to a family-centric focus.

The word “Eucharist” is from a Greek verb (eucharistein), which means “to give thanks.” Is it not appropriate for Catholics to begin Thanksgiving at Mass? Have you planned to incorporate that element into your family’s Thanksgiving repertoire? Indeed, given the prominence of this holiday to Americans, one American liturgist had once suggested making Thanksgiving a holyday of obligation.

The family element of Thanksgiving probably retains the strongest cultural imprint among Americans, but it, too, is weakening. Part of the reason is the decline of the family, but another is the politicization of the feast. The import of political disputes to the Thanksgiving table, especially pronounced in recent years and likely to be accentuated this year with the return of President Trump to the White House, should be resisted. Family is pre-political in the sense that families existed before states did: family always comes first.

The commercial element of Thanksgiving is, overall, the least important part of the holiday, though arguably the one many contemporary Americans value most. After all, elite opinion has banished God from the public square: Joe Biden’s 2023 Thanksgiving Presidential Proclamation managed to keep the “g” word out of the document. The value of family ought to be measured in love, but love is not quantifiable. Black Friday sales numbers are, however.

Without denying the commercial side of Thanksgiving, let’s keep it in check. Various communities have enacted ordinances keeping businesses closed at least until Thanksgiving midnight: the creep of sales into Thanksgiving evening was obscene. Apart from laws, let’s voice our own principles by refusing to join the madding crowd. Let our “local” Saturday purchases truly be local, not the local franchise of a Fortune 500 corporation: this is a chance to demonstrate subsidiarity in practice. Let’s not negate Advent by getting a Christmas tree this weekend. And let us show a restraint in buying that makes it clear we are not Pavlovian dogs, salivating at the ring of the “special sale” bell.

Thanksgiving, as Americans have come to know it, is really three holidays in one. Those three holidays are not necessarily at war unless we lose necessary perspective and essential priorities.