Imagine students asking their teacher what the baseball World Series is about. What would you think if, instead of explaining that it is the annual championship series between the top team in the American League and the top team in National League, the teacher taught the students that the World Series is a nostalgic remembrance of the first World Series in 1903.
The teacher tells the students that we celebrate the World Series every year by talking about what happened in that first World Series in 1903 between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The teacher explains that we gather with family, eat the hot dogs the baseball players ate, and sometimes even dress up like the old teams.
Sound ridiculous? Too often, unfortunately, that’s what educators do when they teach about Thanksgiving. They teach it as a nostalgic remembrance of what happened 400 years ago.
When I am lecturing at universities in their Schools of Education, I’ll ask the students how many of them were taught, when they were in public schools, that Thanksgiving is a time to remember how the Pilgrims invited the Indians to a dinner to thank them. And, of course, all the hands go up.
The fact of the matter is, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year because the President of the United States asks the nation to thank God for the blessings we’ve received during the previous year. That’s why it’s an annual event.
George Washington started things off by calling on the nation to “acknowledge the providence [provision] of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” He never mentioned the Pilgrims.
Until President Lincoln, it was celebrated on different days around the country. He wanted to promote national unity and established the day in November for the entire country to celebrate together. No mention of the Pilgrims.
While modern presidents have gotten into the politically correct habit of mentioning the Pilgrims and Native Americans, they also call on the nation to thank God.
In case of Lynch v. Donnelly, the Supreme Court ruled:
“Our history is replete with official references to the value and invocation of Divine guidance in deliberations and pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and contemporary leaders. Beginning in the early colonial period long before Independence, a day of Thanksgiving was celebrated as a religious holiday to give thanks for the bounties of Nature as gifts from God. President Washington and his successors proclaimed Thanksgiving, with all its religious overtones, a day of national celebration and Congress made it a National Holiday more than a century ago. Ch. 167, 16 Stat. 168. That holiday has not lost its theme of expressing thanks for Divine aid any more than has Christmas lost its religious significance. [465 U.S. 668, 676]”
It is perfectly acceptable, in fact it is academically imperative, for public school educators to teach that Thanksgiving is a time when the entire nation gathers, at the request of the President, to thank God for the blessings we have received as a nation and individually. We do it every year because we are to reflect on how God has blessed us in the past twelve months.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Lesson Plan: Teaching Students about the Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation
Use the President’s annual Thanksgiving Proclamation to teach about the holiday. Here is website where you can find all the Presidential Proclamation.
Gateways THANKSGIVING CARD for teachers