Our forefathers prayed on Thanksgiving. We scroll.



There was a time when Thanksgiving pointed toward something higher than stampedes for electronics or a long weekend of football. At its root, Thanksgiving was a public reminder that faith, family, and country are inseparable — and that a free people must recognize the source of their blessings.

Long before Congress fixed the holiday to the end of November, colonies and early states observed floating days of thanksgiving, prayer, and fasting. These were civic acts as much as religious ones: moments when communities asked God to protect them from calamity and guide their families and their nation.

Grounded in gratitude

The Continental Congress issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1777, drafted by Samuel Adams. The delegates called on Americans to acknowledge God’s providence “with Gratitude” and to implore “such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of.”

Twelve years later, President George Washington proclaimed the first federal day of thanksgiving under the Constitution. He asked citizens to gather in public and private worship, to seek forgiveness for “national and other transgressions,” and to pray for the growth of “true religion and virtue.”

Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

Other presidents followed suit. During rising tensions with France in 1798, John Adams declared a national day of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer,” arguing that only a virtuous people could sustain liberty. The next year he called for another day of thanksgiving, urging citizens to set aside work, confess national sins, and recommit themselves to God.

For generations, this was the American understanding: national strength flowed from moral character, and moral character flowed from religious conviction.

The evolution of a holiday

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln — responding to years of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale — established the last Thursday in November as a permanent national Thanksgiving. Hale saw the holiday as a unifying civic ritual that strengthened families and reminded Americans of their shared heritage.

Calvin Coolidge echoed this tradition in 1924, observing that Thanksgiving revealed “the spiritual strength of the nation.” Even as technology transformed daily life, he insisted that the meaning of the day remain unchanged.

But as the country drifted from an agricultural rhythm and from public expressions of faith, the holiday’s original purpose faded. The deeper meaning — gratitude, repentance, unity — gave way to distraction.

When a nation forgets

Today, America marks Thanksgiving with a national character far removed from the one our forebears envisioned. The founders believed public acknowledgment of God’s authority anchored liberty. Modern institutions increasingly treat religious conviction as an obstacle.

Court rulings have redefined marriage, narrowed the space for religious conscience, and removed long-standing religious symbols from public grounds. Citizens have been fined, penalized, or jailed for refusing to violate their beliefs. The very freedoms early Americans prayed to preserve are now treated as negotiable.

At the same time, other pillars of national life — family stability, civic order, border security, self-government — erode under cultural and political pressure. As faith recedes, government fills the void. The founders warned that a people who lose their internal moral compass invite external control.

Former House Speaker Robert Winthrop (Whig-Mass.) put it plainly in 1849: A society will be governed “either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man.”

A lesson from history

The collapse of religious conviction in much of Europe created a vacuum quickly filled by ideologies hostile to Western values. America resisted this trend longer, but the rising influence of secularism and identity ideology pushes our society toward the same drift: a nation less confident in its heritage, less united by a common purpose.

Ronald Reagan saw the warning signs decades ago. In his 1989 farewell, he lamented that younger generations were no longer taught to love their country or understand why the Pilgrims came here. Patriotism, once absorbed through family, school, and culture, had been replaced by fashionable cynicism.

Thanksgiving offers the antidote Reagan urged: a return to gratitude, history, and shared purpose.

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Photo by Barney Burstein/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Thanksgiving was meant to be the clearest expression of a nation united by faith, family, and patriotism. It rooted liberty in gratitude and gratitude in God’s providence.

Reagan captured that spirit in 1986, writing that Thanksgiving “underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation.” That conviction made possible the prosperity and freedom Americans inherited.

Today’s constitutional conservatives must lead in restoring that heritage — not by nostalgia, but by example. Families who teach gratitude, faith, and national purpose build the civic strength the founders believed essential.

A return to gratitude

Thanksgiving calls each of us to humility: to recognize that national renewal begins with personal renewal. Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

That confidence is the heart of Thanksgiving. It is why the Pilgrims prayed, why Congress proclaimed days of fasting and praise, why Lincoln unified the holiday, and why generations of Americans pause each November to give thanks.

Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at Conservative Review in 2015.

The families behind our veterans deserve more than once-a-year thanks



Every November, America pauses to thank its veterans. As Thanksgiving approaches — and as we mark Veterans and Military Families Month — it’s worth remembering that real gratitude does not begin in ceremonies. It begins in living rooms, workplaces, and communities willing to listen.

When I returned from Iraq, I believed my mission was complete. I had led soldiers through chaos during the invasion of Baghdad and made it home alive. What I didn’t expect was the second battle: reintegration. Purpose felt less defined. Connection felt harder to find. The uniform came off, but the transition demanded its own kind of discipline.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

Like many veterans, I learned that coming home isn’t an ending. It’s a transfer of duty.

Service that spans generations

That duty is carried not just by veterans but by the families who stand behind them. A spouse manages a household while absorbing the worry that never quite fades. A child learns resilience from absence. A parent hopes each phone call means his son or daughter is one day closer to coming home — and able to stay.

My son is now a second lieutenant in the Army. Watching him begin his own journey reminds me that service does not stop at the edge of a battlefield. It moves through generations. Families carry it alongside us.

The meaning of gratitude

Thanksgiving offers a natural moment to reflect on gratitude — not the polite version, but the kind that demands something from us.

It demands employers who recognize leadership potential behind a résumé gap.

It demands communities willing to listen before advising.

It demands fellow veterans who know that strength includes accepting help, not just offering it.

Most of all, it demands that Americans see military families not as supporting characters but as central figures in the story of national resilience.

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skynesher via iStock/Getty Images

What we owe the next generation

The wars of the last two decades lasted longer than anyone expected. Their consequences will last even longer. We owe it to the next generation — including my son’s — to show that a nation’s strength is not measured only by how it deploys its forces, but by how it welcomes them back.

As we close Veterans and Military Families Month and gather around Thanksgiving tables, we can honor veterans in a simple but meaningful way: not by assuming we understand their experience, but by inviting them to share it. Not by thanking them once a year, but by offering them roles in which their judgment, discipline, and experience make a difference.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

Thank God for God: Being grateful for gratitude



Several months ago, I came across a conversation on X (formerly Twitter) that caused me to think about the horrors of hell in an entirely different way. Rather than shudder at the torture imposed upon damned souls by demons and other accursed creatures, I had to stop and consider the torture that damned souls impose upon themselves.

"There's not a single grateful thought in hell," said Father Brian O'Brien, echoing a statement attributed to noted exorcist Father Chad Ripperger.

— (@)

Hell is eternal separation from God, as all Christians know, and most people think of hell as wallowing in an endless bath of fire surrounded by warring demons tormenting physical bodies that can no longer die. But, as Fr. Ripperger perceived, hell is also a permanent mental state that prohibits thoughts of God and the goodness of His creation, including our fellow man.

In other words, hell is endless fixation on the self. If there is no God, then man is his own highest being. Such a powerful position may sound enticing at first. As Satan infamously declares in John Milton's "Paradise Lost," "Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n."

But Milton's Satan is lying, as the real Satan always does, and we are now living in a hellscape of our own making because we have accepted his lies and tried to recreate ourselves rather than accept our subordinate role as the created. People have irreparably mutilated their bodies — or even worse, the bodies of their children — in a vain attempt to change their sex. We have toppled statues and destroyed monuments in an effort to jettison the past.

In a recent op-ed in the Nation, two leftist writers even considered doing away entirely with Thanksgiving, a civic holiday that reminds us of our interconnectedness and shared smallness, and replacing it with "Truthsgiving," which apparently would be little more than a yearly lecture from perpetually aggrieved activists.

Chase Iron Eyes called the story of the first Thanksgiving feast a "new myth" created by "aliens in a foreign land" who needed "a sense of people, purpose, and place."

His colleague Sean Sherman argued that the "sanitized version of Thanksgiving neglects to mention the violence, land theft, and subsequent decimation of Indigenous populations ... [and] causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities."

I cannot imagine a more miserable way to spend a day than to focus on the sufferings of those long since dead rather than the blessings of the present age. And everyone, no matter their circumstances, still has something and someone for which to give thanks.

The purest form of gratitude we can have is for God for His own sake. Those in recovery from addiction understand well the importance of God as He is, and a young people's recovery group in my area has an apt motto that keeps Him in the forefront of their minds: thank God for God.

After thanking God for Himself, we must also appreciate His many gifts. Jesus Christ is Lord over all "in heaven and on earth and under the earth," as St. Paul's letter to the Philippians reminds us, and all that we have comes from Him. We cannot possibly repay Him for His generosity, but we can at least devote one day a year to reflecting upon it.

Finally, we must be grateful for one another. Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, once said that "if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." If we belong to each other, then we must love, serve, and give thanks for one another.

And by others, I don't mean strangers of generations gone by but our family, friends, and neighbors in the here and now. We, of course, should remember loved ones who have passed away, but we do not honor the memory of the dead by forgetting the living.

Gratitude to God and to others gives our lives meaning and purpose. This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience and express that gratitude. Whatever it takes, I want to spend eternity standing shoulder to shoulder with all the saints of heaven giving thanks and praise to Him — and avoid forever the one place without Him, the once place where a "grateful thought" cannot exist.

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This Truthsgiving, I'm thankful for European settlement



Cranks come out of the woodwork ahead of every holiday to tell the masses they're celebrating the wrong thing or wrong to celebrate anything at all. Cynical liberal publications dutifully spin off the cranks' latest insights, which are inevitably just old envies and prejudices repackaged for new audiences.

We're told Christopher Columbus is genocidal; the Fourth of July is a celebration fit only for jingos, sexists, and racists; Christmas is environmentally ruinous; and Father's and Mother's Days are hurtfully exclusionary to the reality-averse. Thanksgiving enjoys no exemption.

In its ritual exhibition of late-November ingratitude, the Nation ran a two-stage article by failed Democratic congressional candidate Chase Iron Eyes and Sioux chef Sean Sherman explaining why Americans should either "decolonize" Thanksgiving or replace it with "Truthsgiving."

It is critical to decolonize the day, Sherman suggested, because Thanksgiving's roots are "intertwined with colonial aggression." His preferred decolonized substitute apparently has blessed roots that managed to grow for millennia without absorbing blood from the intertribal wars, slavery, and human sacrifice the Americas were home to prior to European settlement.

According to Sherman, decolonization "means centering the Indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday (and every other day on the calendar)." It also apparently means "resisting the dominance of colonial influences."

A decolonized Thanksgiving is apparently one where we racialize our gratitude, resist the urge to give thanks for the myriad gifts handed down to us from settlers from Britain and Europe, and adopt a "clearer lens" to see that anything capable of inspiring pride in post-17th-century America isn't worth celebrating.

Iron Eyes underscored in his argument for canceling Thanksgiving that we can be thankful so long as we're thankful to the right people. "Give thanks to the Native nations who created the world that we inherit today," he wrote.

Iron Eyes' talk of inheritance and Sherman's call for selective remembrance prompted me to think about the world we actually inherit this Truthsgiving and those to whom we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude but are now asked to discount.

More than for property rights, the free market, and the wheel, this Truthsgiving I'd like to express my gratitude to the decentered settlers for their gift of the written word and a functional alphabet, which enable cranks to air their grievances but also preserve Indian languages and traditions for the benefit of future generations.

I am thankful for the settlers' science — the European origin of which the late sociologist Rodney Stark noted was the result of Abrahamic peoples' belief in a rational God whose creation was likewise rational and therefore replete with discernible truth — which has extended Indian and European lives alike and provided us with dominion over a wilderness once worshipped.

I am thankful for the salvific faith settlers brought over to the New World, which not only affirms human beings' inviolable dignity, the eternal love of God, and the promise of life after death but has informed the culture, customs, and ethic that have helped make America the envy of the world.

I am thankful for the imported rule of law, which spares us all from the tyranny of chieftains and the impulses of the mad mob.

I am also thankful for a society prototyped overseas that is so accommodating and tolerant as to put up, year after year, with blood libels and putdowns from its many beneficiaries.

Iron Eyes concluded his argument with, "Let's tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a Truthsgiving."

Instead, let's drop the lie that European settlement wasn't, at least in the long run, an absolute blessing and acknowledge that the imperfect cast of characters responsible for the society we've inherited don't need our condemnation or praise but rather our understanding and thanks.

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1,600 years before Plymouth, a Thanksgiving feast took place in Israel just before the most important week in human history — and it was all about gratitude



Many centuries before the autumn 1621 meal in Plymouth between the colonists and the Wampanoag, another kind of Thanksgiving feast took place in Israel — and it quietly set the stage for the most important week in human history.

The details come from the Bible — specifically the Gospel of John, chapter 12.

It's a little slice of life wedged between perhaps Jesus' greatest miracle — raising his friend Lazarus from the dead — and his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which marks the beginning of Passover week — the last week of Jesus' life.

But on the day before he enters Jerusalem upon a donkey, treading over palm branches amid cries of "Hosanna," Jesus returns to nearby Bethany to once again be with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, along with his disciples and perhaps others.

On this day, the thankful siblings give Jesus a "dinner."

My pastor discussed this passage on Sunday and mentioned that the Greek word used for "dinner" or "supper" in John 12:2 is the same word used in Revelation 19:9 to describe the "marriage supper of the Lamb." Amazing that this hidden-away gathering — those in power were already plotting to kill Jesus, and he had to be cautious about where he walked — carries and reveals so much spiritual meaning.

Turns out this feast in honor of the Lamb about to be sacrificed for us is centered squarely on gratitude.

We learn that as Martha serves the meal and Lazarus reclines at the table with Jesus, Mary takes expensive ointment, anoints Jesus' feet with it, then wipes his feet with her hair. With that, the whole house is filled with a lavish fragrance — indeed, this is special stuff that appears to be worth the equivalent of a year's wages.

But my pastor pointed out that the monetary value of the ointment doesn't matter to Mary in this moment: She only wants to be present with Jesus and express her love not only for what he's done but also for who he's become in her life.

Judas, on the other hand, criticizes Mary's extravagant gesture as a waste of finances — after which Jesus tells him, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

There's much to be drawn from this snapshot of a gathering in a Middle Eastern town long before turkeys, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and sleeping it all off, only to rise early on Black Friday to take advantage of outrageous discounts on Christmas presents.

Here we see gratitude lived out. A willingness to give up that which is most valuable in a bottom-line sense in order to bestow it upon the One who is most valuable in the eternal sense. My pastor wisely noted that when we give — whether it's our time, our money, our physical efforts, our emotional selves — we give a little bit more of our selfishness away.

What's more, he added that if we practice the discipline not only of giving but of gratitude — daily gratitude, in fact — we can literally change our attitudes for the better over time. Therefore, no matter what has happened to us, no matter how bad we've had it or think we've had it, we can reshape our attitudes and hearts by purposely focusing on things we're grateful for on a daily basis.

On this Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for truths like this that feed my soul and enlighten the path ahead. I'm particularly grateful for Mary's example of extravagant love that pushes cost aside in favor of simply sitting at Jesus' feet.

Really, is there any better place to be?

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