As someone who is not American, I have always admired the fact that Thanksgiving is a national holiday with a certain religious significance--thanks to God for the nation, for the land (with all the questions that entails) and no religious specificity.
Here in the UK, Christmas is a national holiday, and the country shuts down for a week or more, but it clearly has a religious significance which excludes--or should exclude--non-Christians.
I do not know how easy it will be to maintain the national, all-embracing character of Thanksgiving in the US, but I very much hope it will. The idea that you can have a festival of Thanksgiving that is religiously non-specific, but uniting of the nation whatever people's origins are, is wholly to be welcomed.
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