In the 1976 movie Rocky, two very lonely people, Rocky and Adrian, end up going out on a date on Thanksgiving. Adrian’s brother had just pulled her turkey from the oven and threw it into the alley. After crying, Adrian leaves the house with Rocky. On the front porch he tries to make light of the situation by saying he didn’t like turkey that much anyway. “But it’s Thanksgiving,” Adrian responds. Rocky says, “To you it’s Thanksgiving. To me, it’s just Thursday.”
I have a nice little scar on the back of my left hand which I can blame on the movie Rocky. As a middle-schooler, I was inspired to start doing one-handed push-ups in imitation of the boxer Rocky, as he trained for his big fight. My hand took a beating in the process, and I had to have an operation. You’ve got to love movies.
The movie industry took off about fifty years before Rocky was made. The Englishman GK Chesterton, the most prolific writer and journalist of his time, was not a big fan. Writing in 1920, he stated:
The only real objection to the cinema is one nobody mentions … It is the indictment against the whole of our modern mechanical and urban civilization, and it simply this—that people cannot enjoy themselves. That is, they cannot amuse themselves, and therefore they must be amused.
They do not enjoy themselves, just as they do not govern themselves, because they are not free men and do not own themselves. They have to enjoy something that does not come from themselves, but from a class of men richer or more cunning or more scientific than themselves. So, in the decline of Rome the semi-servile rabble cried to the emperor for circuses as well as bread.
Was GK Chesterton an old crank? Or some kind of Puritan? No. In 1920 Chesterton was two years out from becoming Catholic. Chesterton was large and jolly. He loved beer and bacon and cigars. The Puritans were a religious sect in England who felt themselves too pure for the rest of the population. Puritans did not smile, dance, or drink. And they celebrated no Christian holidays because that would have involved merriment and laughter.
Now, the Pilgrims, a break-off from the Puritans, were purer than the Puritans. The Pilgrims came to the New World on the Mayflower, and as our history books tell us, they celebrated Thanksgiving with the Native Americans. As with the movies, Chesterton was not a big fan of this story. Thanksgiving in America, he wrote, had become a nice family holiday. But that’s all it was.
Puritans, Chesterton wrote, started a secular fall festival to compete with Christian holy days, like Christmas and Easter—which Puritans did not celebrate. Chesterton wrote that if America has Thanksgiving because the Pilgrims came there, then England should have a Thanksgiving to celebrate that the Pilgrims left!
Chesterton had an argument about Thanksgiving. A scholar noted it was not until the mid-19th century that anyone even heard of the “First Thanksgiving.” A Protestant New Hampshire woman, the editor of a popular magazine, came across a Pilgrim’s diary that detailed a 1621 gathering of Pilgrims and Native Americans. In 1845 she started a crusade to start an “American” feast day that would promote the New England Protestant values of simplicity, economy, and patriotism.
Her magazine featured illustrations of Pilgrims in black buckled hats and Native Americans with feathered head dresses eating turkey and pumpkin pie. She lobbied politicians, preachers, and presidents, and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November would be a day of Thanksgiving. Attempting to mend the North and South who were at war, this national holiday’s central focus would be a family meal.
The scholar argued that Thanksgiving would not take hold in the South for many years, for southerners despised Lincoln. In the North, immigrant Catholics were slow to take part as well. They had already been celebrating Thanksgiving for centuries. They had their autumn holy days and fall festivals such as Michaelmas (the feast of St Michael on Sep 29th) and Martinmas, the feast of Martin of Tours on November 11th. They considered the new federally mandated holiday Protestant.
When bishops, such as Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, encouraged Catholics to integrate and celebrate Thanksgiving, other bishops complained. Bishop Benjamin Keiley of Savannah stated publicly that Gibbons had “out-heroded Herod” by encouraging Catholics to recognize “the damnably Puritanical substitute for Christmas.” As late as 1910, the Catholic Encyclopedia stated that Catholic recognition of Thanksgiving was a recent development and not yet an official general custom. That changed after World War I ended in 1918, as the Church became more Americanized.
And so, my friends: Enjoy the day off this week as you celebrate with family and friends. Eat your turkey and pumpkin pie. Watch some football and have yourself amused by watching a movie or two. Have fun, but in doing all this, understand something: It’s just Thursday.
Understand that like ancient Rome, the rabble in our declining culture are crying out more and more to the emperors for bread and circuses. And when the food and entertainment is delivered, the rabble bows down and worships the state as if it were God on His throne.
In 1925, after Marxists had taken over Russia and Mexico, and were making inroads most everywhere else, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King.
The Pope declared:
The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation; that right was denied … Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers.
Is the Church today under the power of the state? Recall a few years back, in Marxist fashion, a select few in Washington DC declared that Holy Mass was non-essential business. Our bishops acquiesced. They passively submitted, while “essential” abortion mills, liquor stores, and casinos were left open. Those who voiced their displeasure and did not care to play along with these arbitrary commands were canceled and tagged as enemies of the state.
Friends, later this week is just Thursday. And it is not Christmas yet either. That doesn’t make me an old crank or prude for saying so. The secular world, the world that does not believe that Christ is King, is already celebrating their Hallmark Ho-Ho-Ho version of Christmas. And it isn’t even Advent yet.
Back in the day, our bishops sought to Americanize us, to integrate us, so we would fit in and not be so marginalized. They wanted our Protestant country to stop accusing us of being loyal to a foreign potentate, a monarch in Rome, the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
The problem with all this is that we are indeed loyal to a foreign Monarch—whose kingdom is not of this world. We are supposed to be anyway. Are you?
The emperors of this world, a class of men richer, more cunning, and scientific, are busy doling out bread and circuses to keep the rabble at bay and our eyes off the truth. Christ the King gives you bread from heaven, the bread that gives eternal life.
Christ dies on the cross to give you this bread. This death of your King takes place in a mystical, timeless sacrifice so it can be applied to your soul now. Realize this and you will never come to Mass to be entertained or amused. You will be too busy bowing down and worshipping your King on His throne.
And for the rest of your life, you will never need something outside of yourself to amuse you. Instead, you will know that you need something outside of yourself to save you. That something, that someone is Jesus Christ, your Lord and King of the Universe.
Photo by Preslie Hirsch on Unsplash
