The Anti-Holiday

Promotional Image: Wolfwalkers (2020)

 

Pastor’s Epistle—November 2025

One of my favorite subgenres of historical holidays is “holidays that tried to replace other holidays and failed.” The Anglican Church, for example, instituted the festival of Harvest Home at the autumnal equinox in order to displace Michaelmas, the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, because they considered the latter to be too Catholic.

This effort failed. The people still celebrated Michaelmas on 29 September. But they didn’t reject Harvest Home either. Instead, they simply welcomed both. I consider this a win-win scenario. Growing up in Pennsylvania, Harvest Home wasn’t a huge deal, but our congregation faithfully observed it, and I rather enjoyed that we did.

Another example would be Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, celebrated in the UK. Initially the Protestant hierarchy suppressed the Allhallowtide (Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls) again because it reeked a bit of Rome. Bonfire Night, on 5 November, commemorated the collapse of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. It effectively carried over most of the Halloween traditions, only now in an anti-Catholic guise. Same fun, new label.

In the States, the most successful anti-holiday has to be Thanksgiving. See, the Puritan fathers of New England frowned upon any holiday that they considered unbiblical, most infamously Christmas. “How on earth could anyone reject Christmas?” we wonder. But in their defense, the Yuletide was more of a drunken debauch back then. Rather than observing annual festivals, the Puritans preferred spontaneous days of fasting or thanksgiving.

Fast days called the community to repentance, and weren’t terribly much fun. Days of Thanksgiving were also mostly spent in worship, without the games and feasts we associate with it today. These were declared extempore, more-or-less spontaneously. This they considered more authentic, more faithful, than days of preplanned revelry. But as New England prospered, and the Puritans settled down, their grandchildren proved less strict.

Over time, New Englanders got used to plentiful harvests, and days of thanksgiving being proclaimed in response. A rhythm developed; they came to expect a thanksgiving each autumn. And with wealth and abundance, those thanksgivings became bit less pious and a bit more plenteous. An annual Thanksgiving holiday emerged.

In the wake of the Civil War, this New England tradition went national, in an attempt to harken a divided America back to our shared roots (or at least one of them): our Pilgrim forefathers. With family, feasting, and faith, Thanksgiving took on the trappings of the very winter holiday it initially had been set against. In other words, it was a way for people who claimed not to celebrate Christmas to celebrate Christmas.

I certainly enjoy a good Thanksgiving, more so with every passing year, and I’m grateful that it has proved generally resistant to commercialization and commodification. It isn’t a holiday as such on our Church calendar; technically it’s a State affair. But its themes of mutuality, sociability, and gratitude may be embraced by all people of good faith.

May you have a happy Thanksgiving. And may it herald the Advent season, as we prepare our hearts and our homes for the King.

In Jesus. Amen.