I just saw a troll posting some Thanksgiving Hating on a message boards. Specifically hating on Chuck Norris. And that ain’t right. Chuck Norris is awesome and he wins every debate automatically because of his awesomeness. The fact that all of his arguments are also correct is merely incidental. But I digress. Freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion, and separation of church and state doesn’t mean banishment of faith from all public venues. It’s pretty obvious when public expression of faith is okay and when it isn’t. Blowing up abortion clinics = bad. Thanking God for being elected to public office = fine. Saying God inspired you to raise money for cancer research = awesome. It’s stupid to imagine people of faith can separate their faith from their method of expressing themselves, and even stupider to think it’s necessary. There should be reasonable limits, but there’s no need to banish it or recriminate people who lived in a historical setting where a religious vocabulary was part of their culture and language.

Yes, you could argue that the Plymoth Plantation Thanksgiving of 1621 (mistakenly referred to as The First Thanksgiving, which it wasn’t since Thanksgiving was celebrated by many Europeans) was a religious occasion. There’s records that people prayed and gave thanks to God. You can also argue that it is seen today by many as adding insult to injury regarding the millions of Native Americans whose lives and lands were lost due to European immigration.

As someone who has an ancestor that sailed on the Mayflower and Native American blood, I’m just gonna throw it out there that this is a debate usually had by upper middle class white people with Steven Segal ponytails, square spectacles, and a case of The Smug that absolutely overlooks the diversity and complexity of Native American cultures. It was never White versus Red. If it had been Europeans never would have established themselves here at all because Indian tribes would have been too politically unified. They didn’t see themselves as being part of the same nation any more than Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and English did simply because they were all Caucasian.

The Pilgrims initially skirmished with the Massasoit Indians, but they established a treaty and became very close allies, eventually fighting side-by-side against other Indian tribes in King Philip’s War. On the day of Thanksgiving, European and Indian people were living together in the same territory as legally established neighbors. European settlement of the Americas was probably inevitable. But instead of putting blanket condemnation on Ol’ Whitey, maybe we should look back and see that there were many immigrants who came to this country and did things the right way. Communication was the key to understanding and coexistence, and we can thank Samoset and Squanto for that.

The origin of Thanksgiving was never explicitly religious, as harvest festivals celebrating bounty are a part of every culture on Earth. Religious language permeated how the Pilgrims expressed themselves (duh) but that doesn’t make the festival a religious event. If you read the writings of William Bradford and Edward Winslow, this was about expressing thankfulness that they’d made it through the vicious winter of 1620/21 and showing hope for a brighter future. If they want to credit God for that, rad. This is America. You can do what you want. Optimism is a critical part of what makes America what it is, and I’m happy to see optimism expressed in any way, religious or secular. Grouchy pessimism is for the Old World. I want to live in the New.

Thanksgiving is a kickass holiday. There will always be grumpy haters who will look at a rose just to find signs of it wilting and trolls who provoke a needless debate by cherry-picking facts. In the meantime, I’m going to be over here being thankful for my pumpkin pie and football.