Public schools in Portland, Oregon, are teaching children that Thanksgiving is about genocide and racism. Mary Grabar reports, “Pity the poor child in Portland, Oregon, schools. While many still think of Thanksgiving as a time to come together with family and friends to celebrate our multicultural heritage over a festive meal, eighth-graders in the Antifa epicenter have the notion drummed into them that Thanksgiving really is a celebration of the genocide of the Indians by greedy capitalist Europeans.”
We as Americans have a disheartening way of draining the meaning from holidays. Our culture has made Christmas and Easter totally secular. July 4 is all about booze and loud noises, and we can no longer tell the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
For the offended “Woke” folk to go after the few trace amounts of thankfulness left in the Thanksgiving holiday, is truly evil.
As Grabar pointed out, what these children have had “drummed” into their heads is a lie. This is not enlightenment—it is darkness. As Jesus warned us, “See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:35, NIV). This is especially egregious, because school is supposed to be about learning, not about lies. And teachers should care enough about children not to lie to them.
How and why should Christians defend Thanksgiving? That we cannot immediately answer how and why speaks to our present condition before God. And are we surprised that we can’t answer them?
The steady diet of “feel good” sermons being preached in most churches have not equipped us to push back against the tide of wickedness. We were caught flat-footed when marriage was destroyed and the death culture of abortion took the land.
The concept of Thanksgiving is very biblical: The word thanksgiving occurs 29 times in the Bible, and the concept of giving thanks is found in 93 additional verses. Most of us know Psalm 100 by heart, especially verse 4: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name!” So, it is small wonder those who serve the powers of darkness and who have plans for evil hate the spirit of gratitude behind Thanksgiving.
There are epic reasons to defend Thanksgiving: The oxygen of freedom is gratitude. Any day that forces us to stop, take a deep breath and thank God, adds to our national lifespan. What the socialism-promoting teachers in Portland, Oregon, are doing is sowing seeds to bring about an early death for America.
If there are such things as “big fat lies,” this one is morbidly obese. In fact, the origin of Thanksgiving is, in itself, the very rebuke all those teachers in Portland need. Far from genocide and greed, Thanksgiving came to us out of the purest motivation possible.
Cheryl Magness wrote, “Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of the children’s song ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ has historically received much of the credit for the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Pilgrim Hall, a museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, dedicated to preserving and passing down the history and stories of the Pilgrims, calls Hale the ‘godmother of Thanksgiving.'”
Hale was an established poet and writer, when in 1837, she began writing a series of editorials advocating for a national Thanksgiving holiday. George Washington, John Adams and James Madison had issued Thanksgiving proclamations in the early years of the nation, but after Madison’s 1799 proclamation, the practice had ceased.
As the Civil War approached and the nation became increasingly divided, Hale saw a national Thanksgiving observance as a means of bridging the divide. On Sept. 28, 1863, just under three months after the Battle of Gettysburg, she wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln entreating him to call for a national celebration of Thanksgiving. On Oct. 3 of that year, he did so.
Thanksgiving Should Bridge Divides and Cultivate Unity
A review of Hale’s campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday is a good way to remember what Thanksgiving is about. In her writings, Hale emphasized our identity as Americans, our need for community and our dependence on God—the very things we too often forget in our own observances.
In 1860, Hale wrote:
Everything that contributes to bind us in one vast empire together, to quicken the sympathy that makes us feel, from the icy North to the sunny South, that we are one family, each a member of a great and free Nation, not merely the unit of a remote locality, is worthy of being cherished. We have sought to reawaken and increase this sympathy, believing that the fine filaments of the affections are stronger than laws to keep the Union of our States sacred in the hearts of our people… We believe our Thanksgiving Day, if fixed and perpetuated, will be a great and sanctifying promoter of this national spirit.
To make something beautiful into something ugly, to exalt the vile above the sublime, seems to be the stock in trade of the modern left, composed of American Communists bent on destroying this nation. They must not be allowed to get away with their lies … especially not their lies to children.
I say it as much with a fervent prayer as a greeting: Happy Thanksgiving and God bless America! {eoa}
Permission has been granted by Mario Murillo to share this Thanksgiving article.
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