Should Christians Celebrate Thanksgiving?

 The title of this commentary poses a question uniquely for American readers, for Thanksgiving would appear to be a uniquely American holiday. Yet we may also observe that, as a harvest festival, it has parallels throughout the world, for nearly every nation, culture, and religion on earth celebrates harvest festivals.

Almighty God, too, has His harvest festivals: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Unleavened Bread marks the beginning of the barley harvest, as we’ve seen previously, and the Feast of Pentecost is “the firstfruits of wheat harvest” (Ex. 34:22). The Feast of Tabernacles, on the other hand, marks the end of harvesting: “Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the LORD for seven days” (Lev. 23:39).

For this reason, the Feast of Tabernacles is also described as “the Feast of Ingathering at the end [lit. “turning”] of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field” (Ex. 23:16). God commanded His people to rejoice before Him, to give Him thanks for the bountiful harvest and for all His many blessings:

13 You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress.

14 “And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow, who are within your gates.

15 “Seven days you shall keep a sacred feast to the LORD your God in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you surely rejoice. (Deut. 16:13-15.)

So God has appointed a harvest festival each year, the Feast of Ingathering, or Tabernacles. This world, too, has its various harvest festivals, its own feasts of ingathering. African tribes have their own unique harvest festivals, the Chinese have theirs, India has a host of harvest festivals, the European nations have theirs, and the American Indian tribes had theirs. Nearly all the world’s harvest festivals are pagan, as even modest research will quickly show. They’re every bit as pagan and demonic as Christmas and Easter.

But what about Thanksgiving? It would seem, as we observed a moment ago, to be a uniquely American holiday and therefore devoid of any ancient, pagan tradition. So is there anything wrong with it?

Roots of Thanksgiving

The “first thanksgiving” is a matter of interpretation. In May of 1541, Spanish Catholics celebrated a thanksgiving feast in what is now Texas. On June 30, 1564, French Protestants (called Huguenots) also celebrated a day of thanksgiving after settling on the site of modern Jacksonville, Florida. (They would be slaughtered by the Spaniards the following year.) On August 9, 1607, “English settlers led by Captain George Popham joined Abnaki Indians along Maine's Kennebec River for a harvest feast and prayer meeting.” And in the spring of 1610, English settlers held a day of thanksgiving after food ships arrived from England. All this can be found at the timeline here.

But the Thanksgiving holiday that we know stems from the English Protestants (primarily Puritans) who settled in New England. The Puritans’ name derived from their desire to “purify” the Church of England. Among other things, Puritans rejected most “Christian” holidays, especially Christmas and Easter, rightly proclaiming them to be devilish and pagan. Instead of regular holidays, Puritans observed occasional days of fasting or of thanksgiving, the former whenever Divine intervention was needed and the latter when it had been received.

The Separatists shared many beliefs in common with the Puritans, but desired to separate from the Church of England rather than attempting to “purify” it. They, too, rejected pagan holidays and instead observed days of fasting or of thanksgiving as needed.

But though they rejected many of the pagan holidays, both the Puritans and the Separatists venerated Sunday as the sacred Christian sabbath. To Sunday — “the venerable day of the sun,” as the Roman Emperor Constantine proclaimed it in AD 321 — both the Puritans and the Separatists ascribed all the honor, and more, that God had placed on the seventh-day Sabbath. It will be noted that neither the Puritans nor the Separatists observed either the Biblical Sabbath or any of the Biblical Holy Days.

And now, here’s the part most of us are familiar with, the part we were all taught growing up, albeit an abbreviated version. In 1620, a group of Separatists boarded the Mayflower and set sail for North America, landing in modern-day Massachusetts and founding the colony of Plymouth. This was in November, just as winter was about to set in. The winter of 1620-21 took the lives of half the settlers, who were unprepared for the harsh New England winters. Those who survived would plant crops, aided by some of the friendly natives, and the fall harvest of 1621 would be sufficient to tide them through the next winter. The settlers (or Pilgrims, as we now call them) held a three-day feast around the end of September to celebrate their harvest and to give thanks to God. Many neighboring Indians joined them in celebration, contributing venison to the feast.

But it wasn’t the Pilgrims’ intent to establish a new holiday. This wasn’t an officially proclaimed day of thanksgiving, it didn’t happen in late November, and it wasn’t celebrated thereafter. In fact, the Pilgrims’ one-time harvest celebration was all but forgotten until the 19th century, over 200 years later! Not until 1841 would it be proclaimed as the “First Thanksgiving,” and that solely on the basis that it appeared to be similar to later celebrations.

Most of the rest of New England was settled by Puritans. As already noted, the Puritans observed occasional days of thanksgiving whenever they deemed appropriate. They frowned upon the establishment of regularly-occurring holidays, but over time this would change. By the end of the 1600s, most of the New England colonies recognized an annual Thanksgiving festival between mid-November and mid-December. There was no universally agreed upon date, but each colony proclaimed it independently of the others.

The exact origin of these local Thanksgivings isn’t quite clear. It’s often speculated, perhaps rightly, that they were influenced by the English Harvest Home celebration, which is itself a holdover from Anglo-Saxon paganism.

Regardless, these Thanksgiving celebrations gave us most of the traditions that we know today. Since Thanksgiving occurred after the fall harvest but before cows or pigs were butchered and stored away for the winter, the preferred meat for Thanksgiving was usually wild turkey or other fowl. Turkey, potatoes, pumpkins, green beans, pies — all the usual Thanksgiving fare is attested in contemporary accounts from the 1700s and 1800s.

Traditionally, a New England family would attend church (or “meeting”) on the morning of Thanksgiving, although some family members might stay behind to continue food preparations. Historian James Baker, in his article “The American Thanksgiving Holiday,” observes,

When the morning service was over at noon or one o’clock, families and guests returned to their homes to await dinner, which was usually served at two or three o’clock. Predictably, turkey was the foundation of the feast, but it also included chicken pie, roast beef, the various vegetables available to New Englanders in November or December, pies and puddings, and ended with dried fruits and nuts. Cider (which was always alcoholic) and wine were commonly served before the temperance movement organized its challenge to this custom. Children in some families might eat separately from the adults. Thanksgiving was not a child’s holiday, as much as they might enjoy it, but one in which adult activities such as games and dancing included the younger members of the family. After dinner, the company gathered for various pastimes such as games, conversation, songs, story telling or visits to other households. There was a supper later on, if desired. The more pious households kept up the older tradition of a discussion of the sermon followed by fireside prayers, and most families had some sort of prayer at the end of the short late-autumn evening. Schools were often closed for the entire week, and the following Friday was sometimes enjoyed as a day off work as well.

Over the years, as New Englanders migrated to other parts of the United States, Thanksgiving came to be celebrated throughout the nation. James Baker writes, “There was still no fixed date for these annual events, a holdover from Puritan providentialism, but most were scheduled in late November or early December. Each year, the date was announced by civil authority. The state governor would ‘advise’ the churches by official proclamation that this was when they should observe the holiday. By the 1850s virtually every state and territory was observing an annual thanksgiving.”

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a national holiday. This was due in no small part to decades of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale, a native of New Hampshire and the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. She had campaigned for Thanksgiving’s nationwide acceptance since at least 1837. More on Sarah Hale in a moment.

And so Thanksgiving has come down to us today, an American holiday rooted in the Puritan heritage of New England. A harvest festival bequeathed to us by people who, in the beginning, hated holidays.

So is it an acceptable day to celebrate? We’ve seen, perhaps, some loose ties to the pagan festival of Harvest Home, but nothing concrete. Some trappings of the day, such as the cornucopia, can be traced back to paganism. But otherwise, nothing we’ve seen about the history of Thanksgiving seems overtly pagan. Most of the traditional foods associated with Thanksgiving are perfectly acceptable under God’s dietary laws.

And it might be asked, What’s wrong with giving thanks for God’s many blessings, including a bountiful harvest? Or, How is Thanksgiving so very different from the Jewish festivals of Purim and Hanukkah? Purim commemorates God’s deliverance of the Jews in the Book of Esther, and Hanukkah commemorates cleansing the temple after Antiochus Epiphanes defiled it with the abomination of desolation, as foretold in the Book of Daniel. Neither Purim nor Hanukkah is commanded by God, but the Bible mentions both without condemning either. (Although we might point out that many modern traditions associated with Purim and Hanukkah ARE pagan.)

Let’s consider a few more things about Thanksgiving. Some food for thought, if you will.

Some Things to Consider

Remember, early on, we observed that God has already established a seven-day feast to give Him thanks for the harvest and for all His other blessings: the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Ingathering. This is one of the expressly stated purposes of the Feast!

Now, if this nation was righteous and obeyed our great Creator, if it celebrated God’s Holy Days as He commanded, would Thanksgiving have ever been so much as a thought? If the Puritans had observed the Feast of Tabernacles, would it have ever occurred to them to establish another harvest festival? A second feast of ingathering a month after the one God established?

Sarah J. Hale, in her campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, wrote,

What could do more to arouse and preserve the fraternal feelings which should exist, especially among the nations of Christendom, than the establishment and universal observance of one general Christian Festival of Thanksgiving, on the same day of the year, throughout those nations? All sects and creeds who take the Bible as their rule of faith and morals could unite in such a festival. The Jews, also, who find the direct command for a feast at the ingathering of harvest, would gladly join in this Thanksgiving ... a universal holiday on the LAST THURSDAY OF NOVEMBER. (Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1861.)

CongregationsofGod.org has reproduced no less than six additional quotations in which Sarah Hale presented Thanksgiving as a Christian alternative to God’s Holy Days! The article further observes, “Mrs. Hale… pushed for and sought after a holiday that was to replicate God's holy days with a new form of worship, a ‘new testament’ version of God's ‘old testament’ holy days. A universal day for all Christians to observe together.”

When we put these quotes together with the fact that the Puritans rejected God's Holy Days, it almost seems as if Thanksgiving was ordained by man specifically as an alternative to the Feast of Tabernacles! A cheap knock-off and a counterfeit, if you will. A holiday which would never have existed if men kept God’s Holy Days as He commanded!

In this way, how is Thanksgiving so very different from the pagan harvest festivals of other nations? All of them are, at their core, counterfeits of God’s Holy Days!

Let us consider, too, that the United States does not worship the God of the Bible in the way that He commanded, nor has it ever. This may be painful for many to admit, but it’s true. Yes, it was founded by devout “Christians,” but remember that mainstream Christianity is a hybrid religion, a mixture of truth and paganism. We’ve previously documented many of the pagan traditions of Christianity, though it is by no means an exhaustive list.

What does God have to say about mixtures? Let’s read what He had to say about one such hybrid religion:

33 They feared the LORD, yet served their own gods — according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away.

34 To this day they continue practicing the former rituals; they do not fear the LORD, nor do they follow their statutes or their ordinances, or the law and commandment which the LORD had commanded the children of Jacob, whom He named Israel... (2 Kings 17:33-34.)

These were the Samaritans, the people whom the king of Assyria brought to Israel after he removed the Israelites. And is there any more perfect description of mainstream Christianity? Professing Christians fear the Lord and invoke the name of Jesus, yet continue practicing the former rituals, the pagan customs of Rome, the Celts, the Germanic peoples, and other nations! They pay lip service to our great Creator, yet they reject His laws and commandments. We’ve seen all this previously.

And where did the Samaritans get this hybrid religion, this spiritual ancestor of mainstream Christianity? Why, they were taught it by one of the priests of Israel! The Assyrian king had sent an Israelite priest back to the land to teach the Samaritans “how they should fear the LORD” (2 Kings 17:28).

This hybrid Israelite religion went back to Jeroboam, the first king of Israel. Throughout the history of the northern kingdom of Israel, every Israelite king “did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, but walked in them.”

Now, one of Jeroboam’s first acts was to invent a counterfeit of the Feast of Tabernacles:

32 Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made. And at Bethel he installed the priests of the high places which he had made.

33 So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month which he had devised in his own heart. And he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and offered sacrifices on the altar and burned incense. (1 Kings 12:32-33.)

And so we have a harvest festival established a month after the Feast of Tabernacles, designed specifically as an alternative to the Feast of Tabernacles! Sound familiar? Is this not what our modern holiday of Thanksgiving is? A cheap knock-off of the Feast of Tabernacles that falls a month afterward? Should that not at least give us pause?

Conclusion

It is my opinion that Thanksgiving — a religious harvest festival invented by people who rejected God’s Holy Days — is not a holiday that God’s people ought to celebrate. We have the Feast of Ingathering already, the Feast of Tabernacles.

Since we have God’s appointed Holy Days already, why should we join those who reject His commandments in worshiping Him on other days which He has not commanded? Since we have God’s commanded harvest festival already, why should we celebrate another harvest festival a month later, joining with those who do not worship our Creator in the manner that He commanded?

But beyond this, I contend that celebrating Thanksgiving has caused many of God’s people to forget that the Feast of Tabernacles is HIS harvest festival. People have forgotten that one of the primary purposes of the Feast of Tabernacles is to give God thanks for His bountiful harvest and for all His many blessings. This is the REAL, Divinely-ordained feast of thanksgiving, not the cheap, man-made knockoff!

Again, this is not a proclamation of “Thus saith the Lord.” This is simply my opinion, for the reasons which have been laid out. These are things that I think we all ought to consider.

Any input? Disagreements? Questions? Additions? Leave a comment below!