Thanksgiving is part of American "Civil Religion." It is and should be celebrated by people of faith and humanists alike.

The “First Thanksgiving” was religious in origin, both from the Pilgrim perspective and from the Wampanoag Indian perspective. It was a harvest festival and both groups saw the land and its bounty as a gift of the Creator.

The Pilgrim view was largely Calvinist and Calvin’s theology would dictate that all blessing comes from the sovereign God. God’s sovereignty meant, as Edward Winslow writes in his contemporary account (December 12, 1621) that their harvest was “by the goodness of God.”

The Indians present at the three-day feast were from the Wampanoag (meaning Eastern) federation of Native American tribes. Wampanoag Indians are alive and well today (as are the Pilgrims in my own United Church of Christ heritage).Then as now, the Wampanoag have a deeply spiritual attitude toward the land and giving thanks for the Creator’s gifts is an integral part of their daily life.

It was Abraham Lincoln who, in 1863, proclaimed the first Thanksgiving as a national holiday and in that proclamation called on all Americans to give thanks for the “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” that show the “ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

Thanksgiving as a national holiday has now become part of what we call “civil religion,” that is, the shared ritual practices of a nation that serve to unite them. Civil religion is based on the idea that there can be broad values that people of diverse religious perspectives, and people who would count themselves humanists, all share. One does not need to be a “believer” in God to share deeply in these values.

There can be great abuses of civil religion, as when the nation becomes an object of worship itself. But Thanksgiving as practiced in the U.S. is a great unifier and we could do more with it.

Let’s take our cue from the Wampanoag and John Calvin and Abraham Lincoln and make Thanksgiving THE environmental holiday. We need to give thanks for THIS creation and commit ourselves to saving this environment so we can have, as Lincoln said, “fruitful fields and healthful skies.”