Thanksgiving is easily the best holiday of the year. It is accessible to Americans of all faiths and backgrounds, has no sectarian attributes and does not involve shopping or the presumption of gift-giving. Rather, it urges us to reflect on the blessings we enjoy and to give thanks for them as a nation. One question, though. To whom do we give thanks? The ACLU and others who want to pretend that there is no faith or invocation of God in American tradition will want to ignore the history of Thanksgiving, because Americans are called to give thanks this day to God.

Read George Washington's original Thanksgiving proclamation.

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

Or Abraham Lincoln's proclamation, which made Thanksgiving a national holiday.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

This of course will be uncomfortable for those who pretend, or even actually believe, that America is an atheistic country and that our history dictates a complete disavowal of faith in public life. The Constitution expressly forbids establishment of state religion, but until the courts invented it, there was clearly never a mission to exclude entirely religion from the public square.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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