A Letter to the New York Post,
Editorial, "For Which We Give Thanks,"
24 November 2022

Editorial Note:

Thanksgiving is a prime hate-America season; and, not surprisingly, people like the racist sociopath Joy Reid and the dishonest fake "historian" Nikole Hannah-Jones were out giving us full evidence of it, dismissing Thanksgiving as a celebration of "genocide," etc. My letter to the Post was to urge them to give us a bit more perspective on the matter, since the simplistic mythology about the Pilgrims plays into the hands of the haters.

"Letters to the Editor"
New York Post

Dear Sirs:

After the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving is the quintessentially American holiday. But when George Washington or John Adams proclaimed days of Thanksgiving, it was literally to thank God; and it had little or nothing to do with the Pilgrims and the "First" Thanksgiving.

Such proclamations stopped with Thomas Jefferson, who thought they were too overtly religious to be the business of the United States Government. Your editorial about the day doesn't mention this.

Abraham Lincoln restarted a Thanksgiving Day because the death and trauma of the Civil War made everyone feel that divine assistance was needed for the struggle. This is when "In God We Trust" was put on the coins.

Associating Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims is a later elaboration. There is nothing wrong with that, but it gives the people who hate America a handle to complain about colonialism, genocide, racism and all the other evils they want see in our Nation. They can be rebuked on their own ground, but it doesn't help when the more recent origin of the holiday in the Civil War is forgotten. The thanks to God there is for the end of slavery and rebellion, along with everything else. The people who hate America, indeed, do not want to remember that. They should be reminded. I hope you will do that in the future.

Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

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