One cannot help but notice, as each year passes, the terminology used for our holidays moves more and more to “politically correct” jargon. This year it seems to have jumped up a couple notches with the use of “Turkey Day” rather than “Thanksgiving”. Turkey Day is not a new term, I have heard that used to refer to Thanksgiving as far back as the 80’s at least. Just as “Xmas” has been used for a long time to refer to Christmas. The only difference is in the frequency with which one hears the terms in advertising or reads them in news stories. It really does appear that many people are determined to remove any thought of ‘Thankfulness to God’ from our national language. My question is; what is the point? Either we believe in God and are willing to observe a holiday in which we acknowledge our belief that He is the source of all we have to be thankful for, or we don’t, in which case we can’t thank Him.
Freedom of religion is one of the founding principles of the U.S., from the very beginning of our nation. That also means that our constitution gives an atheist the ‘right to their religion’. But how has it come to be that “the few” are having such an influence on “the many” when it comes to religion and holidays. By “the few” I refer to those of the atheist religion, who somehow are offended that “the many” (those of us who believe in God) are willing to observe a day of “Thanksgiving” for all that God has blessed us with.
We all know the flawed argument that they are using in an attempt to rid our nation of any Christian symbols or influence, that being the ‘separation of church and state’ clause in the constitution. In their extreme zeal for their anti-God religion they act as if the very ideal of God is an affront to their very thin-skinned faith that there is no God.
I can’t say for certain the percentage of Americans who acknowledge faith in God, I see that on a billboard the atheists have put up on a N.J. highway that they claim 37 million Americans don’t believe in the “myth” of Jesus, so what? That only means that about 270 million do believe in Jesus as fact, while the minority want to bury their heads in the sands of ignorance, about recorded history, and refuse to believe. Truth is not determined by “numbers”, but rather by facts. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” The fact is our nation, until very recently, has recognized that God has blessed us far above any nation on earth, certainly in recent generations, and likely in the history of the world.
What is the point of “the few” insisting that we throw God overboard and be converted to a ‘godless religion’, as they hold. Yes, I am aware that they say atheism is not a “religion”, but in this, they are only fooling themselves. Religion is a belief, or faith in that which is ‘unseen’. Thus it comes down to a simple matter of choices. I chose, based on a whole boatload, of what is commonly referred to as “Christian Evidences” to put my faith in God. That would be the God as in the Jewish/Christian context of faith. On the other hand, the “atheist” has chosen to put his “faith” in; “Nothing” (I don’t mean for it to sound sarcastic, even though it might.) I realize most in the atheist faith claim to arrive at their religion based on modern science in some manner. But even that does not make sense to a person of average ‘reason’. For Science itself could not exist without a universe of order, held together by “some force” that is unseen. When we believe in something ‘unseen’ we are in the realm of “faith”, I chose to believe in God, the atheist chooses to believe that our ordered marvelous universe just came about by accident with no causal force, now that takes “faith”!
Enough on that. I will refer to Thursday as “Thanksgiving” and thank God for all His blessings. Another thing I will be doing on Thursday is ‘digging up memories’ of Thanksgiving days of my youth.
I grew up in the late 60’s & early 70’s. Our family lived on what was called a “farm”, 80 acres of southern OH land, a mixture of fields, streams and woodland. Thanksgiving Day was observed, at least in my memorable teen years, with certain predictable traditions. One, we lived in a small house, in which there were our family of 8, plus often times (the ones I remember most) we had a family of cousins come down from the northern part of the state to spend the holiday with us. This was another 6-8 people, depending on how many of them came. There was at least 12 people in that little house for Thanksgiving dinner.
Naturally the teenage boys & usually our fathers were out of the house first thing after breakfast. I for one, did not want to be around when the women folk were cooking Thanksgiving dinner! If we were not quick to exit the premises, it was very possible to find ourselves put to work peeling potatoes or some such thing. Thanksgiving was a day for rabbit hunting! We would call up the Beagles, if any were about , and head out with our single shot shotguns to beat the brush in search of cottontails. I don’t think the success of the hunt was very important, at least not to me. What was important in my mind was to stay out of the kitchen! I was no hand at cooking then, nor now. Some things are best avoided at all cost. For me, cooking a Thanksgiving Day dinner is one of those things. But the consuming of it is not something to be left to the women folk!
Now here is how the tradition worked. You can’t just sit a dozen people around a small table in a small kitchen, all at once. It was a practice in our family clan, to seat and feed the men and near grown boys, first. Yea, like in the women serving up the food and refilling the bowls, then waiting until the men were all stuffed before they sat down around the table to eat. I suppose in these modern days of “political correctness” that practice would be about as repulsive as Thanksgiving is to an atheist. But that is simply the way things were done and to do otherwise, like in having the women sit down to eat while the men served the food, would have raised more than ’eyebrows’! In fact, I am guessing ‘the women’ would have taken a skillet to the head of anyone who suggested such a change in “tradition”. It just was not done, nor would it have been considered proper to do so.
I did cook one Thanksgiving dinner. It might be considered a ‘disgrace’, but it was not turkey and gravy. That day would have been in the mid-90’s. My wife had gone out of state to have Thanksgiving with her family, I was ‘stuck in MN’, to my complete satisfaction. It was one of those years in which cold weather had set in very early. We already had the fish houses out on the lakes, with plenty of ice. Being ‘on my own hook’ that day, I went to the lake and was successful in catching a nice mess of Walleye. What a feast I had that evening for my Thanksgiving dinner!
In a land of freedom, we all ought to have the right to exercise our faith. If the atheist wants to skip the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holiday, that is their choice, but I don’t give them the power to take away my choice.
As most men, I am not a big fan of holidays, other than ‘deer season’, but I am Thankful that God has given me the ‘right’ and freedom to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S.A. I am also thankful that we have thousands of young soldiers willing to risk and give their lives to keep that freedom from being crushed by ‘religious zealots’ who would force their religion upon me, if they had the power. While the atheist screams and kicks that his eyes might fall upon a nativity scene next month, those same soldiers are fighting for his freedom to whine about it.
God Bless American and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
No comments:
Post a Comment