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Carol Platt Liebau - Columnist
Carol
Platt Liebau is editorial director and a senior member of tOR and CRO editorial
boards. She is an attorney, political analyst and commentator
based in San Marino, CA, and has appeared on the Fox News
Channel, MSNBC, CNN, Orange County News Channel, Cox Cable
and a variety of radio programs throughout the United States.
A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School,
Carol Platt Liebau also served as the first female managing
editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her web log can be found
at CarolLiebau.blogspot.com
[go to Liebau index]
 Thanksgiving
The Most American Holiday of All
[Carol Platt Liebau] 11/25/04
If Christmas
is the king of America’s
holiday calendar, Thanksgiving sometimes seems like its forgotten
stepdaughter.
As a child
in the Midwest of the 1970’s, my older brother
always protested when Christmas decorations were up before Thanksgiving.
Now, of course, such outrage seems like a quaint relic of a bygone
age. As soon as Halloween’s jack-o-lanterns are put back
into storage, they are replaced with sleighs, trees, and the
other secular symbols of what has increasingly become known as
the “holiday season.”
It is, perhaps,
ironic that America’s only non-sectarian
religious holiday is also its least commercialized. There are
no gifts like at Christmas or Hanukkah, no chocolate and flowers
like Easter – nor are there the fireworks, barbeque and
car sales of Independence Day or the surging alcohol sales of
Halloween. And where Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus,
Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem,
and Easter celebrates the resurrection of the crucified Christ,
Thanksgiving isn’t actually about jubilation. It’s
really the only major holiday that, as its name indicates, is
dedicated to simple thanksgiving – a quieter, but no less
heartfelt, emotion.
Even the
music of Thanksgiving is as unique as it is beautiful. Alone
among America’s holidays, the songs devoted to it
are almost exclusively religious – there is no “Here
Comes Santa Claus,” “The Dreidel Song” or “Here
Comes Peter Cotton Tail.” And the faith referenced in Thanksgiving
hymns is robust and old-fashioned, reflecting a world view remarkably
at odds with the content-free, feel-good “spirituality” being
peddled to believers today.
Take We
Gather Together – perhaps the most
famous Thanksgiving hymn ever. It references a Lord that “chastens,” even
as it both recognizes God as the ultimate defender against “wicked
oppressing” and prays for the Lord’s congregation
to “escape tribulation.” Another well-known and beautiful
Thanksgiving hymn, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come likewise
acknowledges God’s judgment along with His mercy, looking
to a day when He will “Giv[e] angels charge at last in
the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store in His garner evermore,” as
it implores Him to “gather all Thy people in, free from
sorrow, free from sin.”
Yet the references
to sin, trials and sorrow – harkening
back to a time when Americans acknowledged the existence of tribulation
as an inevitable part of life -- darken Thanksgiving’s
music not at all. Rather, they render the recognition of God’s
supreme power, and the expression of gratitude for mercy and
deliverance, even more solemn, beautiful and heartfelt.
Beginning
with George Washington, many American presidents issued one-time
Thanksgiving
Day proclamations. But it was Abraham Lincoln
who declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday in perpetuity,
noting that, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that God
should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged,
as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.” And
in its willingness to set aside a day not for a Canadian-style “harvest
festival,” but for a real, religious Thanksgiving, lays
the root of America’s greatness.
Thanksgiving is the only secular holiday inescapably infused
with religious meaning. For a nation founded with a secular government
undeniably rooted in religious faith, that truth in itself serves
to render Thanksgiving the most distinctly American holiday of
all.
This column first appeared at CaliforniaRepublic Thanksgiving 2003
CRO columnist Carol Platt Liebau is a political analyst and
commentator based in San Marino, CA.
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