When I was a Christian, Thanksgiving was a VERY important religious holiday. I never could figure out why an Atheist would want to try to secularize it.

Don’t you think the religious aspect is somewhat ambiguous? It certainly wasn’t apparent to me when I was a child. I’m rather embarrassed to say that I didn’t even make the connection between Thanksgiving and giving thanks to a god until I was in my teens. My family always celebrated Thanksgiving in a secular way. I learned the story of the Pilgrims in school, of course, but I’d always thought that they were thanking the Indians for helping them survive the winter. I knew the Pilgrims were religious, but it just never occurred to me that modern-day people were supposed to be thanking a deity.

I also think it’s a much more powerful expression to turn to a family member at the table during Thanksgiving and say, “Thank you for your help with … this past summer. I was really struggling, and your … meant a lot,” than to mumble out a bland “I’m thankful for my family and my happiness and my health and.…”

Hmm, Ryan, that is a thought. I will keep this in mind. My daughter’s doing a lot for me these days and even though you say thank you when these things are done, it seems so automatic. I think it would please her to have a special thanks in that kind of setting and she deserves the special acknowledgement.

To require that gratitude be expressed to a specific agent seems fallacious in the same way that the existence of the universe requires an agent to have created it. If the universe can just be, can’t I just be thankful?

Many of the things I’m thankful for cannot be nailed down to a specific agent or few. I’m thankful that I have a house to live in. Does that require that I seek out the individual builders that participated in its manufacture for my gratitude to exist coherently as defined? I’ve never met these agents and likely never will. What does it mean that I have a feeling of gratitude that cannot be directed toward a specific human individual that can comprehend that expression? That I’m delusionally incoherent?

That in mind, I also think it’s a much more powerful expression to turn to a family member at the table during Thanksgiving and say, “Thank you for your help with … this past summer. I was really struggling, and your … meant a lot,” than to mumble out a bland “I’m thankful for my family and my happiness and my health and.…”

Just kidding…sort of. There are times when I wish that we had Thanksgiving class though…so long as we quit in time for the football games!

But yes, the exercise of taking stock and looking for things to be grateful for helps me mood and it helps put me in the frame of mind to share some of my extra with those who don’t have any.

Black Friday is a good day to stay home out of harm’s way. Or work. Work is dead. It’s an easy day’s pay. Problem will be the traffic on the commute home. I live near a mall. It’s gonna be a bitch from now until Christmas getting past said mall.

I’m grateful to my daughter for going to school. I’m grateful to her and my son for being a loving family to me. I’m grateful to myself for selecting a career that places me behind a desk and enables me to keep working. I appreciate my doctor keeping me on my feet enough to continue it. I’m thankful to whoever invented the rolling walker in general and to Nova sepcifically for being the brand I bought that is enabling to still get around a bit.

The day’s Thanksgiving. It doesn’t say who you have to thank. That’s a very individual choice. So Christians thank “God”; I’ll thank science for my pain medication and the walker even while I curse my genetics and the childhood malnutrition that led me here too fucking early in life. (I’m only 51.) And, frankly, better my legs than my brain.

Yes, I do appreciate what I have year round but it’s nice to have a day designated to remind us to reflect on all we do have instead of all we don’t.

Who are you thanking if not a god? Sure, you can make sense by thanking people for their hard work, but Christians created this holiday so that you could thank their god.

When I was a Christian, Thanksgiving was a VERY important religious holiday. I never could figure out why an Atheist would want to try to secularize it. Just like Christmas. How many other parts of religion do we need to try to co-opt?

It’s their party, their problem. We don’t need to wait for one particular day of the year to thank people. Sheesh!

Some of us don’t like religious holidays, even if we try to secularize them. It’s useless. We should be original instead. Trying to use someone else’s special day for our own purposes is dishonest and unecessary. We DO have better holiday ideas. Just because the majority doesn’t recognize them doesn’t mean we need to give up in that regard.

Plus I have some Cherokee in me. That’s another huge set of reasons. There are more. Gluttony…sloth…one need not be religious in order to see such obvious and repeated problems.

I’m glad it’s over. Now to the War on Christmas! Charge! )

Annnyywayss….I eat a LOT of pumpkin pie. Tonight, I think I ate at least half of one. I invited my Japanese friend over because he has never experienced Thanksgiving before and he was so excited about it. I’m glad I got to make someone smile.

p.s. the thing I most hate about Thanksgiving is the so called holiday after it—Black Friday. I refuse to acknowledge it as a holiday. >.> I am being grumpy about it because most of these Black Friday deals that I’ve seen are total crap and just encourage people to buy crap that they don’t need at 4 in the morning.