Month: November 2020

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared at a public hearing of Pennsylvania Republicans Wednesday to review his claims of voter fraud and election irregularities in the commonwealth.

The hearing was hosted by the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Committee, led by State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams/Cumberland/Franklin/York) at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg.

President Trump is relying on Giuliani and campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis to represent his legal battle to challenge 2020 election results in each state.

An audience of Pennsylvania Trump supporters also appeared to listen to the presented evidence.

“All we ask is that you listen to the facts that we are presenting and then evaluate it,” Giuliani said.

Several witnesses appeared in person to describe the voting irregularities they witnessed as they were prevented from meaningful access from the voting process.

“Republicans were uniformly not allowed, kept out, put in chutes like they were cows to keep them away from seeing these ballots,” Giuliani explained.

Other witnesses explained that thousand of ballots were counted in secret, as they were kept out of the room.

Leah Hoopes from Delaware County, Pennsylvania said she served as a poll worker for three straight days as the results came in.

“What became of concern was the back room which had no observers, no line of sign or transparency into the process. there was no cooperation, complete resistance from election night to every day after,” she said.

PA Senate Republicans

Hoops said she and others were intimidated for coming out and signing affidavits about their concerns with the election.

“We have stuck our necks out, been intimidated, threatened bullied, have spent countless hours away from our families friends and jobs,” she said during the hearing.

Attorney Justin C. Kweder, a certified canvass observer said he returned as an election observer for ten days at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

He said that Republican observers were kept between 10-200 ft away from the election counting process.

“It was impossible for me or any observer to see what the workers were doing with any type of specificity,” he said.

He also raised concerns about more than 5,000 damaged mail-in ballots that were duplicated by poll workers.

Other witnesses appeared via video teleconferencing to talk about their concerns with “illegal pre-canvassing” as Democrat counties contacted voters to help “cure” their ballots so they would be counted.

One election observer testified that a poll worker repeatedly cursed at her and threatened to slap her in the face when she tried to verify some of the steps in the voting process.

Giuliani also brought an election security specialist to talk about the voting systems in the United States

The expert questioned the anomaly of reporting spikes in the voting counts for Biden late in the evening as a “prime indicator of fraudulent voting.”

He claimed that there was a discrepancy of around 700,000 ballots between the number of mail-in ballots sent out and the mail-in ballots that were received.

The audience laughed and gasped in shock as the expert noted a point when a spike of votes recorded in Pennsylvania had 600,000 votes for Biden and only 3,200 for Trump.

President Trump called into the hearing, appearing impressed by what he had heard from the witnesses.

He vowed to fight the results of the election and thanked everyone present for sharing their testimonies.

“We have to turn the election over, because there’s no doubt,” Trump said. “We have all the evidence, we have all the affidavits, we have everything, all we need is to have some judge listen to it properly without having a political opinion or having another kind of a problem.”

PA Senate Republicans

The president praised Giuliani for continuing to fight the case, while other lawyers backed down.

“This is going to be your crowning achievement because you are saving our country,” Trump concluded.

Pennsylvania Republicans also took time to question Giuliani and Ellis about the case and the road forward for challenging the election.

State Sen. Mastriano celebrated the successful hearing and thanked the witnesses for stepping up.

“As Jesus said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,’ and guess what, the truth’s out there,” he said as the hearing drew to a close.

He drew comparisons of their fight to the patriots who birthed freedom in Philadelphia, fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, and the heroes of Flight 93.

“We’re not going to let it stand,” he said.

PA Senate Republicans

Thanksgiving Day parades have largely been canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but balloons and floats are symbolically celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year.

American Thanksgiving is modeled on a three-day harvest feast shared by Pilgrims, who had landed in the New World in 1620, and the Wampanoag, a tribe of American Indians, in November 1621.  Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce did not seem to be on the menu, but rather deer and seafood.  Turkey became the meal of choice in the mid-1850s, especially after President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.  It has been celebrated and eaten since then, except when President F.D. Roosevelt changed the date for a short time, on the fourth Thursday of November, a day on which Americans eat more than on any other day of the year.

Thanksgiving is therefore linked historically with the original Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom in the New World, and is connected with the origin of American society.  There are perhaps only ten million Americans who today can trace their ancestry back to them.  They number Humphrey Bogart and Presidents John Adams and James Garfield.  More than half of the original settlers died during the first winter as a result of poor nutrition and housing.  The rest were helped by Squanto, an English-speaking Indian, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe, who taught them to plant corn and where to fish and hunt beaver.  He was the mediator between the Pilgrims and the Indians and therefore responsible for the harvest festival.

Times have changed since the Pilgrims got a shock when they landed on Plymouth Rock.  So have the meaning and significance of that landing four hundred years ago and its consequences for the birth of the American nation.  On November 21, 1620, the Mayflower, a three-masted ship that had sailed from England on September 16, 1620, after a voyage of 65 days, arrived at Cape Cod, Provincetown Harbor.  It contained 102 passengers and 30 crewmen.  Of the 50 men on board, 41 were “Separatists,” true Pilgrims, the group who wanted to leave the Established Church and engage in secret worship, people who had left England to live in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, a wealthy maritime power, and a more religiously diverse and tolerant place than England.  In 1608, this group, in revolt against the Established Church, decided to go to Virginia and set up their own colony.  The rest of passengers on the Mayflower were “Strangers,” who were selected by the Merchant Adventurers, a joint stock company of financial backers for colonial expeditions who funded the Mayflower.  The passengers included indentured workers but no slaves.

The Mayflower had intended to lay anchor in north Virginia, since the Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company, a trading company to colonize parts of the east coast of the New World.  They had intended to settle on land near the Hudson river in north Virginia.  The Pilgrims did not have an official patent to settle in New England, and therefore, on November 21, 1620, while on board the ship, they signed before landing in and inhabiting Patuxet, Plymouth what is known as the Mayflower Compact.  The original document has been lost, but copies of notes have survived with information of the text and the individuals who signed, one of whom is sometimes remembered today: Myles Standish, a military officer hired by the Pilgrims as their military leader and a man who later enforced the new laws and protected the colonists.

The Mayflower Compact is a short document, signed by 41 passengers, written by “loyal subjects of our great sovereign Lord King James.”  They had undertaken to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia for “the glory of god, the advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of king and country.”  What is crucially important is that they agreed on a Covenant, a civic body politic, which would enact, constitute, and frame just and equal laws, ordinances, and offices, for the general good of the colony.  To this they promised all due submission and obedience.

The brief compact can be seen as a mini-constitution, a statement of unity, the first governing document of the New World, a model of self-government, a covenant derived from the consent of the governed.  The self-government lasted 70 years until 1691, when the Plymouth colony became part of Massachusetts Bay colony.  More settlers arrived, thereby leading to an early form of representative government, a General Court, a holdover from the Bay Colony, to which each town elected representatives to attend.

The Mayflower Compact was a covenant, a religious concept that echoes politically with its emphasis on unity, consent of the people, and just and equal laws.  It was significant that the Pilgrims, not British officials in London, chose their own governor, John Carver.

John Quincy Adams declared the agreement the original American social compact.  As a result of current protests against racism and colonialism, not everyone accepts this view.  The argument is made by some who see the Compact as systematic of colonialism, not of liberty.  The most extreme challenge has been, in the New York Times, the formulation of the 1619 Project, the assertion that 1619 was the true birth year of the American nation, not 1776, the normally accepted year.  The reason given is the fact that in August 1619, a ship carrying 20 or more slaves from the area now Angola was captured by pirates.  It landed at Point Comfort in Virginia, where the pirates sold the slaves to Jamestown colonists.  Critics have argued that this was the beginning of slavery in America and that these slaves can be considered “founding fathers” since they see slavery as the basis of American economic growth.  In this view, slavery and its consequences are put in the center of the American story.

This 1619 Project is essentially political propaganda, not history.  This is not to disparage the pain of black experience or deny the reality of slavery and segregation, but to argue as the Project does that the 1619 incident is more important for America than 1776 or 1787 suggests a lack of moral compass.  It should not deprive anyone of his turkey.

Thanksgiving Day parades have largely been canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but balloons and floats are symbolically celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year.

American Thanksgiving is modeled on a three-day harvest feast shared by Pilgrims, who had landed in the New World in 1620, and the Wampanoag, a tribe of American Indians, in November 1621.  Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce did not seem to be on the menu, but rather deer and seafood.  Turkey became the meal of choice in the mid-1850s, especially after President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.  It has been celebrated and eaten since then, except when President F.D. Roosevelt changed the date for a short time, on the fourth Thursday of November, a day on which Americans eat more than on any other day of the year.

Thanksgiving is therefore linked historically with the original Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom in the New World, and is connected with the origin of American society.  There are perhaps only ten million Americans who today can trace their ancestry back to them.  They number Humphrey Bogart and Presidents John Adams and James Garfield.  More than half of the original settlers died during the first winter as a result of poor nutrition and housing.  The rest were helped by Squanto, an English-speaking Indian, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe, who taught them to plant corn and where to fish and hunt beaver.  He was the mediator between the Pilgrims and the Indians and therefore responsible for the harvest festival.

Times have changed since the Pilgrims got a shock when they landed on Plymouth Rock.  So have the meaning and significance of that landing four hundred years ago and its consequences for the birth of the American nation.  On November 21, 1620, the Mayflower, a three-masted ship that had sailed from England on September 16, 1620, after a voyage of 65 days, arrived at Cape Cod, Provincetown Harbor.  It contained 102 passengers and 30 crewmen.  Of the 50 men on board, 41 were “Separatists,” true Pilgrims, the group who wanted to leave the Established Church and engage in secret worship, people who had left England to live in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, a wealthy maritime power, and a more religiously diverse and tolerant place than England.  In 1608, this group, in revolt against the Established Church, decided to go to Virginia and set up their own colony.  The rest of passengers on the Mayflower were “Strangers,” who were selected by the Merchant Adventurers, a joint stock company of financial backers for colonial expeditions who funded the Mayflower.  The passengers included indentured workers but no slaves.

The Mayflower had intended to lay anchor in north Virginia, since the Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company, a trading company to colonize parts of the east coast of the New World.  They had intended to settle on land near the Hudson river in north Virginia.  The Pilgrims did not have an official patent to settle in New England, and therefore, on November 21, 1620, while on board the ship, they signed before landing in and inhabiting Patuxet, Plymouth what is known as the Mayflower Compact.  The original document has been lost, but copies of notes have survived with information of the text and the individuals who signed, one of whom is sometimes remembered today: Myles Standish, a military officer hired by the Pilgrims as their military leader and a man who later enforced the new laws and protected the colonists.

The Mayflower Compact is a short document, signed by 41 passengers, written by “loyal subjects of our great sovereign Lord King James.”  They had undertaken to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia for “the glory of god, the advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of king and country.”  What is crucially important is that they agreed on a Covenant, a civic body politic, which would enact, constitute, and frame just and equal laws, ordinances, and offices, for the general good of the colony.  To this they promised all due submission and obedience.

The brief compact can be seen as a mini-constitution, a statement of unity, the first governing document of the New World, a model of self-government, a covenant derived from the consent of the governed.  The self-government lasted 70 years until 1691, when the Plymouth colony became part of Massachusetts Bay colony.  More settlers arrived, thereby leading to an early form of representative government, a General Court, a holdover from the Bay Colony, to which each town elected representatives to attend.

The Mayflower Compact was a covenant, a religious concept that echoes politically with its emphasis on unity, consent of the people, and just and equal laws.  It was significant that the Pilgrims, not British officials in London, chose their own governor, John Carver.

John Quincy Adams declared the agreement the original American social compact.  As a result of current protests against racism and colonialism, not everyone accepts this view.  The argument is made by some who see the Compact as systematic of colonialism, not of liberty.  The most extreme challenge has been, in the New York Times, the formulation of the 1619 Project, the assertion that 1619 was the true birth year of the American nation, not 1776, the normally accepted year.  The reason given is the fact that in August 1619, a ship carrying 20 or more slaves from the area now Angola was captured by pirates.  It landed at Point Comfort in Virginia, where the pirates sold the slaves to Jamestown colonists.  Critics have argued that this was the beginning of slavery in America and that these slaves can be considered “founding fathers” since they see slavery as the basis of American economic growth.  In this view, slavery and its consequences are put in the center of the American story.

This 1619 Project is essentially political propaganda, not history.  This is not to disparage the pain of black experience or deny the reality of slavery and segregation, but to argue as the Project does that the 1619 incident is more important for America than 1776 or 1787 suggests a lack of moral compass.  It should not deprive anyone of his turkey.

Kate Brown, the Governor of Oregon, was rather ambivalent in her approach to violence during the time Portland was torched by radical mobs.  In fact, she thanked “Oregonians for expressing their free speech rights largely through joyful celebrations…”

But Gov. Brown apparently did some soul searching since the election.  She found a joyful celebration about to be held by unquestionable enemies of the people.  It turns out actual domestic terrorists are Oregonians who wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It’s extremists who wished to dine on turkey and all the trimmings who are dangerous, as they are potential super-spreaders of disease and destruction.  Therefore, it’s Thanksgiving celebrations that need to be tightly regulated. It’s Thanksgiving celebrants who need to be fined and sent to jail if they transgress the regulations the governor has established by executive order.

Among those regulations?

Private social events are to be limited to two households or six individuals in a closed group (including Thanksgiving); masks are to be worn in your own home on Thanksgiving, only removing them when eating; and you are not to leave your home during the two-week shutdown. Consequences include a fine of $1,250 and possible jail time. Neighbors should report non-compliance.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion the Governor wants the bulk of citizens locked within their domiciles while radicals once again roam free to wreak havoc.

The tight regulations during the holidays do make one think about the examples of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China.  

We might recall that citizens of the Soviet Union were not permitted to celebrate Christmas until 1991, when the USSR collapsed.  As Emily Tamkin noted in an essay published in Foreign Policy, czarist Russia, which was widely Christianized, celebrated Christmas.  But the Russian Revolution ushered in the communists, who were anti-Christian secularists. She wrote:

“Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.”

New Year’s Day was promoted as the masses’ favored holiday. It remains so even today, almost thirty years later. Such is the power of mental conditioning over decades.

Meanwhile, as Yuhan Zu noted in his 2018 article for NPR, in the Peoples Republic of China, some leaders of China’s cities have been cracking down on Christmas celebrations, including the city of Langfang, a city of some four million southeast of Beijing:

“According to a notice issued by local officials, government employees must report public Christmas displays and celebrations to their higher-ups. Vendors selling holiday-related items are to be ‘cleared out…’ Christmas was banned in the name of ‘maintaining stability’ and avoiding social unrest, which is of great importance to Chinese government. That could mean…extreme surveillance measures.” (Italics mine.)

If readers are finding a certain commonality among the former apparatchiks of the USSR, the communist overlords of CCP and the killers of Thanksgiving and Christmas cheer in America, perhaps it is because they see killjoys like Oregon’s and California’s governors just may be under the influence of similar socialist/communist ideologies.  All variants of such ideologies specialize in suffocating joy.

However, holiday cheer is not the only thing in the sights of the leftists in America. Yes, the lockdowns advocated by Democrat state governors and mayors are designed to kill the great joy provided by two holidays beloved by nearly all Americans.

Perhaps less noted is the fact that Main Street, USA is jeopardized by the shutdowns during the holiday season. Main Street is already full of shuttered small businesses that have not survived because of the lockdowns that began in March. Total lockdowns followed by reduced capacities have either finished off mom and pop boutiques, hair salons, restaurants, pubs, fitness centers and other small entities; or they have nearly suffocated them to death. 

Those businesses that have hung on rely on the Christmas season to see them through the year.  Even in good times, most small businesses only turn a profit during the holiday season. Many would be completely finished off if there is a lockdown from Thanksgiving until after New Year’s. The initial push to squash the middle class by literally putting it out of business and starving it of funds did not quite succeed. New lockdowns certainly seem designed to snuff out the nascent resurrection of mom and pop operations — to finish off the kulak middle classes, most of whom voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Of course, big corporations will remain unaffected.

Also worthy of note: By and large, the church did not stand up to protect its right to celebrate Easter. We can charitably assume many clergy were operating under the illusion that the Covid-19 crisis would pass and that things would soon return to normal. The initial threat may have been seen as exceedingly ominous.  It seemed understandable that services were temporarily suspended for a few weeks.

But now? 

Surely now church leaders can see Covid-19 regulations and directives are a mask for dictatorial measures.  If they don’t, they may be either willfully blind or allied with the Left. One thing is clear: Tyrannical governors and mayors are using the fear of the virus to make sure the bulk of the populace are paralyzed from gathering together in any way, including gathering to worship.

Unfortunately, the church has long been subject to secularist ideological infiltration.  But now, literally muted by the orders of state and city governors bent on suppressing freedom of religion, it may be assumed that once again, there won’t be much opposition when and if Christmas is cancelled.  Instead, might the State expect full cooperation with all its directives?

It appears it will remain for the Christian underground and other resistors to stand up and be counted.  It will be the task of Christians to understand the Left is and always has been committed to the death of God and of joy. Certainly, those who believe the celebration of the incarnation of Christ should not be impeded by the State must stand up. 

It also will be up to Christians to think of their fellow human beings, including those who do not share their belief in the coming of Jesus Christ. They must think of their neighbors — the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers who simply want to succeed and live quietly.

Resist the left’s attempt to condition Americans to accept a joyless life without holidays except those permitted by and celebrating the god of the State, who tells Christians and others who to worship.  Resist those who issue orders about when and where to celebrate, how and when to hold our religious ceremonies, and even when, how and what to chew and swallow.

Believers in Christmas have reason to celebrate!  So…celebrate!

Happy Thanksgiving and a very merry Christmas to all.

Photto credit: Tony Webster  CC BY-SA 2.0

Fay Voshell received a M.Div. from Princeton theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology.  Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines, including American Thinker.  She has contributed to AT for almost a decade. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com

Kate Brown, the Governor of Oregon, was rather ambivalent in her approach to violence during the time Portland was torched by radical mobs.  In fact, she thanked “Oregonians for expressing their free speech rights largely through joyful celebrations…”

But Gov. Brown apparently did some soul searching since the election.  She found a joyful celebration about to be held by unquestionable enemies of the people.  It turns out actual domestic terrorists are Oregonians who wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It’s extremists who wished to dine on turkey and all the trimmings who are dangerous, as they are potential super-spreaders of disease and destruction.  Therefore, it’s Thanksgiving celebrations that need to be tightly regulated. It’s Thanksgiving celebrants who need to be fined and sent to jail if they transgress the regulations the governor has established by executive order.

Among those regulations?

Private social events are to be limited to two households or six individuals in a closed group (including Thanksgiving); masks are to be worn in your own home on Thanksgiving, only removing them when eating; and you are not to leave your home during the two-week shutdown. Consequences include a fine of $1,250 and possible jail time. Neighbors should report non-compliance.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion the Governor wants the bulk of citizens locked within their domiciles while radicals once again roam free to wreak havoc.

The tight regulations during the holidays do make one think about the examples of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China.  

We might recall that citizens of the Soviet Union were not permitted to celebrate Christmas until 1991, when the USSR collapsed.  As Emily Tamkin noted in an essay published in Foreign Policy, czarist Russia, which was widely Christianized, celebrated Christmas.  But the Russian Revolution ushered in the communists, who were anti-Christian secularists. She wrote:

“Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.”

New Year’s Day was promoted as the masses’ favored holiday. It remains so even today, almost thirty years later. Such is the power of mental conditioning over decades.

Meanwhile, as Yuhan Zu noted in his 2018 article for NPR, in the Peoples Republic of China, some leaders of China’s cities have been cracking down on Christmas celebrations, including the city of Langfang, a city of some four million southeast of Beijing:

“According to a notice issued by local officials, government employees must report public Christmas displays and celebrations to their higher-ups. Vendors selling holiday-related items are to be ‘cleared out…’ Christmas was banned in the name of ‘maintaining stability’ and avoiding social unrest, which is of great importance to Chinese government. That could mean…extreme surveillance measures.” (Italics mine.)

If readers are finding a certain commonality among the former apparatchiks of the USSR, the communist overlords of CCP and the killers of Thanksgiving and Christmas cheer in America, perhaps it is because they see killjoys like Oregon’s and California’s governors just may be under the influence of similar socialist/communist ideologies.  All variants of such ideologies specialize in suffocating joy.

However, holiday cheer is not the only thing in the sights of the leftists in America. Yes, the lockdowns advocated by Democrat state governors and mayors are designed to kill the great joy provided by two holidays beloved by nearly all Americans.

Perhaps less noted is the fact that Main Street, USA is jeopardized by the shutdowns during the holiday season. Main Street is already full of shuttered small businesses that have not survived because of the lockdowns that began in March. Total lockdowns followed by reduced capacities have either finished off mom and pop boutiques, hair salons, restaurants, pubs, fitness centers and other small entities; or they have nearly suffocated them to death. 

Those businesses that have hung on rely on the Christmas season to see them through the year.  Even in good times, most small businesses only turn a profit during the holiday season. Many would be completely finished off if there is a lockdown from Thanksgiving until after New Year’s. The initial push to squash the middle class by literally putting it out of business and starving it of funds did not quite succeed. New lockdowns certainly seem designed to snuff out the nascent resurrection of mom and pop operations — to finish off the kulak middle classes, most of whom voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Of course, big corporations will remain unaffected.

Also worthy of note: By and large, the church did not stand up to protect its right to celebrate Easter. We can charitably assume many clergy were operating under the illusion that the Covid-19 crisis would pass and that things would soon return to normal. The initial threat may have been seen as exceedingly ominous.  It seemed understandable that services were temporarily suspended for a few weeks.

But now? 

Surely now church leaders can see Covid-19 regulations and directives are a mask for dictatorial measures.  If they don’t, they may be either willfully blind or allied with the Left. One thing is clear: Tyrannical governors and mayors are using the fear of the virus to make sure the bulk of the populace are paralyzed from gathering together in any way, including gathering to worship.

Unfortunately, the church has long been subject to secularist ideological infiltration.  But now, literally muted by the orders of state and city governors bent on suppressing freedom of religion, it may be assumed that once again, there won’t be much opposition when and if Christmas is cancelled.  Instead, might the State expect full cooperation with all its directives?

It appears it will remain for the Christian underground and other resistors to stand up and be counted.  It will be the task of Christians to understand the Left is and always has been committed to the death of God and of joy. Certainly, those who believe the celebration of the incarnation of Christ should not be impeded by the State must stand up. 

It also will be up to Christians to think of their fellow human beings, including those who do not share their belief in the coming of Jesus Christ. They must think of their neighbors — the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers who simply want to succeed and live quietly.

Resist the left’s attempt to condition Americans to accept a joyless life without holidays except those permitted by and celebrating the god of the State, who tells Christians and others who to worship.  Resist those who issue orders about when and where to celebrate, how and when to hold our religious ceremonies, and even when, how and what to chew and swallow.

Believers in Christmas have reason to celebrate!  So…celebrate!

Happy Thanksgiving and a very merry Christmas to all.

Photto credit: Tony Webster  CC BY-SA 2.0

Fay Voshell received a M.Div. from Princeton theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology.  Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines, including American Thinker.  She has contributed to AT for almost a decade. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com

It’s Thanksgiving and time for “the wokies” to bring up white supremacy along with more about “the stolen land” theories.  It’s also time to read a good article about what happened in Massachusetts many years ago.  I found this one by Tristan Justice really good and would recommend it a lot:   

All we know about the first Thanksgiving extends to a man named Edward Winslow, an eyewitness who devoted a single paragraph to the event describing Massasoit showing up with 90 men who went out and killed five deer to cook with what the English were preparing. The two groups then feasted for three days.

In short, the Pilgrims took a moment to celebrate abundance after nearly a year of pandemic grief following the death of half their settlement alongside their native neighbors who had also suffered recent harrowing losses. Sound familiar?

Yes, it sounds familiar.  Our family didn’t suffer like the Pilgrims or survive a long winter but it was not easy for my dad with two jobs, my mom counting every dollar and making ends meet somehow.  How did they keep so many balls in the air?

We used to have a lot of conversations about Thanksgiving in those early days.  It was a completely new holiday for us.  I learned the details watching turkey posters in school and hearing kids talk about Pilgrims.

My father once said something really good, and it gets better age.  He reminded me that the Pilgrims said thanks to God for surviving a rough start.  That’s all you have to remember about this holiday he would repeat every time the topic came up.  Everything else, from eating turkey to whether it happened in winter or spring, is just a detail.  

That’s right. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and counting your blessings.  Everything else is fun but inconsequential.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving Day and give thanks for all you have.  In our case, a new grandson who turned six months this week and a 91-year-old mom who has not lost a step after all these years.  And we live in the U.S. where we can be free in so many ways.

P.S.  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

Image: Pixnio

It’s Thanksgiving and time for “the wokies” to bring up white supremacy along with more about “the stolen land” theories.  It’s also time to read a good article about what happened in Massachusetts many years ago.  I found this one by Tristan Justice really good and would recommend it a lot:   

All we know about the first Thanksgiving extends to a man named Edward Winslow, an eyewitness who devoted a single paragraph to the event describing Massasoit showing up with 90 men who went out and killed five deer to cook with what the English were preparing. The two groups then feasted for three days.

In short, the Pilgrims took a moment to celebrate abundance after nearly a year of pandemic grief following the death of half their settlement alongside their native neighbors who had also suffered recent harrowing losses. Sound familiar?

Yes, it sounds familiar.  Our family didn’t suffer like the Pilgrims or survive a long winter but it was not easy for my dad with two jobs, my mom counting every dollar and making ends meet somehow.  How did they keep so many balls in the air?

We used to have a lot of conversations about Thanksgiving in those early days.  It was a completely new holiday for us.  I learned the details watching turkey posters in school and hearing kids talk about Pilgrims.

My father once said something really good, and it gets better age.  He reminded me that the Pilgrims said thanks to God for surviving a rough start.  That’s all you have to remember about this holiday he would repeat every time the topic came up.  Everything else, from eating turkey to whether it happened in winter or spring, is just a detail.  

That’s right. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and counting your blessings.  Everything else is fun but inconsequential.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving Day and give thanks for all you have.  In our case, a new grandson who turned six months this week and a 91-year-old mom who has not lost a step after all these years.  And we live in the U.S. where we can be free in so many ways.

P.S.  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

Image: Pixnio