{"id":43403,"date":"2023-11-25T10:42:32","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T18:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=43403"},"modified":"2023-11-25T10:57:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T18:57:45","slug":"a-zen-meditation-on-our-american-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2023\/11\/a-zen-meditation-on-our-american-thanksgiving.html","title":{"rendered":"A Zen Meditation on our American Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Closeup of Wood sculpture of Guanyin early 19th century CE Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE) China<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

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Our American Thanksgiving has just passed. While it\u2019s set for the third Thursday of November, I\u2019ve noticed many people move the date around for their personal or family observances. I personally know some people who marked it out on Wednesday, and we here in Tujunga actually had our grand family gathering yesterday, Friday.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fascinated with Thanksgiving as a semi-secular semi-well-something else holiday. It combines a lot of things.<\/p>\n

I do like digging around for the history of things. So, just a little.<\/p>\n

Our first American Thanksgiving was proclaimed by George Washington on the 26th of November, 1789. It might be worth noting it was not connected to the Pilgrim story. Washington called out for a day to thank God, well, he rarely used that word, he tended to prefer \u201cProvidence,\u201d and in his formal proclamation said, \u201cthe Almighty,\u201d for divine protection before the Revolution, and then through the revolution, and then out of that for the establishment of a republic.<\/p>\n

When Thomas Jefferson became president, he chose not to continue the proclamation and as a national holiday Thanksgiving was only sporadically observed in subsequent years.<\/p>\n