The Hammock Papers: Godless.

20 November 2023

Godless.

Leyendecker, Thanksgiving, 1928

The American Spectator looks at our Godless Thanksgiving ...

I was recently alerted to a Thanksgiving Day lesson at the website education.com, a go-to source for teachers. On the main page was a 60-minute lesson plan titled, “Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving.” “Thanksgiving offers an opportunity to teach young students about early days in the original colonies,” the plan informs us. “Students will discover the purpose and people involved in the first Thanksgiving.”

So far, so good. But read on.

The introduction instructs the teacher: “Call students together. Ask students to think about some of their favorite holidays and what they like to do on these holidays. Tell students that Thanksgiving is coming up. Ask students what some of their favorite Thanksgiving traditions are. Read Thanksgiving Day.”

Thanksgiving Day is one of three books recommended, none of which — notably — mention God or religion. Not one. There are, however, bountiful references to Native Americans, various tribes, corn, stuffing, potatoes, popcorn, yams, jelly, and turkeys. The Creator even gets trumped by cranberry sauce.

The “review and closing” portion of the “Thanksgiving” lesson concludes with these exciting guidelines: “Have students line up to present their Thanksgiving fact and what they are thankful for. Congratulate the students on their hard work. Encourage everyone to dig into the yummy food and enjoy having a Thanksgiving feast together!”

Dig in, kids, without a thought of thanking the Almighty.

Welcome, pilgrim, to the new world — a place, incidentally, that the Pilgrims long ago fled to for religious reasons.

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL