SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) — Ken
Guthrie and his partner will be at his aunt’s house for Thanksgiving, sharing a
table with his grandmother, siblings and cousins — a veritable holiday crowd.
But when it comes time to
express thanks, Guthrie, a board member of Salt Lake City Pagan Pride, will not
be speaking to the Christian God his relatives might address.
“I’m thanking, first, the
universe for allowing me to be alive. I’m thanking my family for being with me,
and I give thanks to the turkey that gave its life, the plants on our table, to
the Earth itself for being abundant.”
As Thomas Goldsmith, pastor
of this city’s First Unitarian Church, put it: Thanksgiving is one holiday on
which everyone — pagans and theists, atheists and agnostics — can gather around
the theme of gratitude.
“There doesn’t need to be a
theistic object of one’s prayer,” Goldsmith said. “We can be profoundly
grateful without packaging it and sending a message to God.”
Harvest festivals have been
part of human cultures for ages, but Thanksgiving’s roots date to the 1621
feast shared by the Pilgrims — religious separatists from England — and
Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Colony in modern-day Massachusetts.
More than 200 years later,
President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that set the precedent for
America’s Thanksgiving Day. Acting partly on a decades-long campaign by
prominent magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation was
explicitly religious.
It refers to the “watchful
providence of Almighty God” and “gracious gifts of the Most High God.”
Lincoln designated the last
Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving, but it wasn’t declared an
official national holiday until Congress acted in 1941.
Although the Mayflower
Pilgrims had the Almighty in mind when they gathered for that first
Thanksgiving, for some Americans, the holiday is now more about family,
feasting and gratitude.
That may explain why it’s a
favorite holiday for many who don’t believe in God or traditional mainstream
religions’ notions of deity. Florien Wineriter, a retired Salt Lake City radio
broadcaster and an agnostic, considers Thanksgiving a “great holiday.”
“It brings family and
friends together,” says Wineriter, 85. “It’s a secular holiday for thankfulness
of the opportunity of living in this great country and the people who have made
it possible for the past 200 years.”
A widower, he will be at his
daughter’s on Thanksgiving, enjoying turkey, the trimmings and “even a few
libations.”
Grant Larimer, a member of
Atheists of Utah, likes that Thanksgiving is more relaxed, with less religion
than Christmas.
“Any contention you have on
Thanksgiving,” he says, “has nothing to do with religion.”
Larimer will join an old
high-school buddy at the friend’s mother’s home for dinner, and he will bow his
head if the group prays.
“I don’t fall into that
angry atheist crowd,” he says. “I’m going to respect other people’s beliefs …
and would hope others would respect my right to believe in what I believe in.”
Elaine Ball, a co-founder of
the group Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Freethought at the University of Utah,
says Thanksgiving is “more of a time for family than gratitude toward a god.”
This year, she and several
friends will pitch in to buy a free-range turkey, because ethically raised
animals and plants, she said, replenish the Earth, and gratitude to an abundant
Earth leads her toward greater charity.
“Having so much food, and so
much good food, makes me think of those people who don’t,” she said.
Goldsmith, at First
Unitarian, says that charitable impulse is one reason the holiday is his
favorite.
“Thanksgiving is not just a
one-way street, but a responsibility to take gratitude to the next level, which
is generosity.”
Patrick Orlob, founder of
the social-networking group Salt City Skeptics, said that although Thanksgiving
may have religious roots, it’s an adaptable holiday.
“It’s more about what you
put into it,” he says. “It’s about being with the people you care about.”
It’s good to consider the abundance
in one’s life, he added, especially compared with many others in the world.
“I don’t think you
necessarily have to be thankful to something like a god,” says Orlob, who will
share a small Thanksgiving meal with riends.
Guthrie says Thanksgiving is
one of his favorite holidays, partly because it’s a fusion of Christianity and
Native American traditions, infused with echoes of pagan harvest feasts in
Europe.
“I see it as a festival that a lot of people can
get behind,” Guthrie says. “It’s a piece of Americana. It’s one day to
celebrate hard work.”