By Joe Saunders November 30, 2024 at 6:28am
Doddering through his dotage, and in the dwindling days of his term, the “devout” President Joe Biden isn’t so devout after all.
The ostensibly Catholic president, who hasn’t let his supposed faith disturb his politics when it comes to a moral question like abortion, didn’t let even a glimpse of that faith appear in his Thanksgiving proclamation to the nation.
In fact, for the second year in a row, there was a major figure missing in Biden’s message.
That figure was God — the Creator the Pilgrims gathered to thank for a successful harvest after surviving their first year on the North American continent back in 1621.
Instead, in Biden’s final Thanksgiving proclamation, the credit for the successful harvest goes to “the generosity and kindness of the Wampanoag people” — a fine collection of indigenous individuals, no doubt, but not exactly what the Pilgrims would have had in mind.
Biden’s message also notes that George Washington and his Continental Army “found a moment for Thanksgiving,” though it elides identifying the actual Recipient of the appreciation.
And it recalls that Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, “finding gratitude in the courage of the American people who sacrifice so much for our country.”
Again, the chief Actor in the piece is missing. Exactly Whom is being thanked goes unmentioned.
Appalling as it is, it wasn’t always this way.
Did you thank God on Thanksgiving?
Biden’s Thanksgiving proclamations as president in 2021 and 2022 both mentioned God prominently. In 2021, He was right there in the lede. In 2022 the inexhaustible goodness of the Wampanoag people crept in, but the Deity’s presence was undeniable.
In 2023’s message, however, the object of our thanks had been disappeared down the memory hole.
This is foolishness on a cosmic scale — leaving out the most important part of the holiday.
It’s also a betrayal of the historic foundations of Thanksgiving itself.
The men and women of the Mayflower came to the New World for one reason only — religious freedom. When they gave thanks at that first Thanksgiving, it was to the Christian God they worshipped, Wampanoag wisdom notwithstanding.
When George Washington and his troops gave thanks during the Revolutionary War, it was the Omniscient One they had in mind.
And when Washington, as president of the new United States in 1789, declared the first Thanksgiving holiday, it was to recognize that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God.”
Lincoln, likewise, declared a national day of thanks in 1863 for “the gracious gifts of the Most High God.” (There’s not much ambivalence about Those Three Words.)
But in the last year of the Biden White House, and for the second year in a row, Lincoln’s “Most High God” is not in the picture.
This is the so-called “devout Catholic” president who ostentatiously wears Catholicism on his sleeve (and sometimes on his forehead), even though championing the abortion that his own church condemns.
Granted, he’s been on the mental decline for some time — long before the debate with Donald Trump that torched the Biden re-election campaign — but the secular atheism of Biden’s latest Thanksgiving messages, and his final one in the White House, should repel every American, regardless of faith.
Expecting perfection from any human being us a fool’s game, and expecting perfect adherence to religious beliefs from even the most “devout” is no wiser.
But consistency isn’t too much to ask. If Biden had kept God in his proclamations — in conformity with not only American history but his own lifelong religion — even the noble Wampanoags would have understood.
Fortunately, Americans will have a new president in the White House in January. And if President-elect Trump’s previous Thanksgiving messages are any indication, there will be no Mystery Benefactor receiving official American thanks next year.
Trump’s proclamations in 2017, 2018, 2019, and even in the beleagured, post-election year of 2020, all made it clear that Thanksgiving was a day for giving thanks to God for the blessings of life.
It’s a good bet that’s a practice that’s going to return.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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