According to leftists who have been making up the rules in America for the last several years, cultural appropriation is bad. If you are busy signaling your virtue by repenting of your “privilege,” please do not culturally appropriate the holidays of our Christian and Westernized heritage.
Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures.
Examples of cultural appropriation include white people using Native American names for sports teams, wearing clothing that are derived from another culture’s fashion, or using imagery belonging to another’s faith or civilization (Stars of David, Celtic crosses, etc…). Heck, we were even told this year that little white girls shouldn’t dress up as darker-skinned Disney characters because, you know, it’s cultural appropriation. And forget doing the Tomahawk Chop at a ball-game, you racist.
Well, atheists and agnostics should get their own dang holidays. Thanksgiving is a holiday designed to thank God for his manifold blessings and for divine providence.
William Bradford, governor of the fledgling American colony full of religion Separatists, wrote of that first Thanksgiving…
And afterwards the Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing, caused a fruitful and liberal harvest, to their no small comfort and rejoicing. For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a day of thanksgiving… By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine now God gave them plenty…
Stemming from a tradition of the Calvinist Pilgrims thanking God for surviving the trans-Atlantic voyage and the arduous first season, the United States Congress passed a Resolution on October 18 of 1780, thanking God for divine providence.
It read…
” Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of…It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor… “– Congressional Prayer ProclamationJournals of Congress, 9:854-85
President Lincoln again gave a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863 during the heat of the Civil War.
Lincoln’s proclamation read…
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God…No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
This is our holiday, atheists. Who do you have to thank, anyway? Do you ask a blessing and give thanksgiving before the meal to yourself? Do you thank random chance? Do you show appreciation to evolutionary chance? If you give thanks, to whom do you give thanks?
If we are to be convinced that borrowing from another’s culture is wrong, then certainly those who are displeased with Western Civilization should go into work this Thanksgiving, toil away at their jobs, and avoid turkey and dressing at all cost.
Atheists should start their own holy days, where they can sit around and stew in their own nihilism and talk about the meaninglessness of their existence. They can sing hymns about pointless and say incantations of hopeless despair.
Please stop stealing our holidays. It’s very, very cultural appropriatey. And from what we hear, that’s wrong.
