I dealt with Halloween arguments here but that’s not my point for this article. Many holidays have pagan origins but I’ve rarely seen a charge raised against Thanksgiving (even though it also has pagan roots). My main premise with this post is to show how far spread certain practices are across religions and how that’s not surprising in the least (more info crossposted at The Bible Archive).

The US Thanksgiving was set as the fourth Thursday of November by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. In Canada, the 2nd Monday in October was set apart for “General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest” in 1957. But way before North America thought to argue “Who came first”, there were autumn celebrations all over the world that centered around the harvest. In England there was Harvest Home demarcating the fall equinox as particularly holy and featuring the cailleach (corn dolly). Korea has Chu-Sok that begins August 15th and continues for three days. Ancient Rome had Cerelia on October 4th and China has the August Moon festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month.

Now before anyone takes up a cause arguing against the pagans, let it be noted that the Jews celebrated mitzvah of bikurim (The Feast of Firstfruits) as per Deuteronomy 26:1-12 around the same time as the pagans. Both groups gave thanks and both groups enjoyed a fine meal. Now, that being so I don’t think it invalidates the Jewish practice but actually establishes it as true.

I’ll have to unpack that.

People, The Apostle Paul points out, were capable of seeing God’s invisible attributes around them and yet willfully chose to suppress that and assign (then acknowledge) those attributes to things within the created system (Romans 1). In other words, people saw in creation something of God, refused to attribute it to a Real Living God and instead came up with some idea of a god over that one aspect of their lives