Thomas Jefferson believed in many things.
He believed in American independence.
He believed that all men were created equal, even if he didn’t necessarily practice that.
He even believed in mammoths and instructed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find one on their expedition west.
He did not believe in Thanksgiving.
This week we celebrate a holiday officially declared by Congress and proclaimed again for good measure by the president.
The Sage of Charlottesville — and part-time resident of Bedford County — would have been horrified.
There was another thing that Jefferson believed in, perhaps more strongly than anything else: He believed in the separation of church and state. While Thanksgiving technically isn’t a religious holiday, the “giving thanks” part of it struck Jefferson as being far too religious for his tastes. As our nation’s third president, he stirred controversy by refusing to recognize Thanksgiving.
The football games, the parades, the turkey on the table — we have no idea how Jefferson would have felt about all that. But we know how he felt about the day itself.
Here’s some more of the history some of us were never taught, but which helped shape who we are.
First, we must deal with Jefferson’s views on religion — as touchy a subject then as now. Here’s what Monticello says about that on its website: “Jefferson’s relationship with Christianity was complicated.” Umm, yeah.
Jefferson very much believed in a Supreme Being, but “the God in which he believed was not the traditional Christian divinity. Jefferson rejected the notion of the Trinity and Jesus’ divinity. He rejected Biblical miracles, the resurrection, the atonement, and original sin (believing that God could not fault or condemn all humanity for the sins of others, a gross injustice).” Later in life, Jefferson took a razor to the New Testament to cut out all the portions that dealt with Jesus’ teachings — but not his miracles — and then pasted them together to create his own version of the Bible. “In neither the eighteenth century nor today would most people consider a person with those views a ‘Christian,’” Monticello says.
Jefferson referenced “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence and “that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe” in his first inaugural address, but he also intensely believed that religion was a private matter in which government shouldn’t interfere. That’s what drove his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786, which became a forerunner for the later First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He was so proud of that bill that he directed it be listed on his gravestone, with no reference to his service as president.
Because of his “complicated” views on religion, Jefferson was often criticized as a nonbeliever — or worse — by his political opponents, who were both numerous and vocal. He was called “a howling atheist,” a “hardened infidel” and an “enemy of religion.” The 1800 presidential campaign — in which Jefferson challenged President John Adams — was a particularly contentious one. One anti-Jefferson newspaper warned that if he were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.” Just imagine that today on Twitter and 30-second TV spots. Actually, you don’t have to. Some people have already turned the incendiary rhetoric of 1800 into fake TV ads.
All this is necessary background to understand Jefferson’s views on Thanksgiving, but first we need some background on the holiday.
In olden times, a “thanksgiving” was not a regular holiday but one that was declared whenever it was deemed appropriate. The Continental Congress started declaring an annual day of Thanksgiving in 1777, when the American Revolution was still underway and the outcome was by no means certain. Those dates were sometimes in November, more often in December. In his first year as president, George Washington proclaimed Nov. 26, 1789 “to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” In 1795 Washington proclaimed Feb. 19 of that year as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” His successor, John Adams, declared May 9, 1798, and April 25, 1799, as days “of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” His proclamations never mentioned giving thanks.
When Jefferson became president, the expectation was that he’d do something similar. He did not. The Library of Congress says that Jefferson was not out of line with his party — alternately called the Anti-Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans or sometimes just the Republicans (no relationship to today’s Republicans) — who believed that fast days were religious acts “over which the civil magistrate, in the American system, had no authority.” He had not really articulated that during the presidential campaign, though.
Now he was president and getting criticized by the Federalists for not declaring a day of thanksgiving. Then an opportunity arrived, in the form of a letter from Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, who were concerned that their state’s constitution did not explicitly say anything about religious freedom. They wanted assurance that they would be able to practice their faith without interference. Jefferson sat down to write the Baptists a reply.
In the first first draft of his letter, Jefferson pointed out that “I have refrained from prescribing even occasional performances of devotion.” In the final version, he tightened up the prose and left that out but went on to employ a more memorable phrase: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Jefferson served eight years and never did declare a day of thanksgiving.
His successor, James Madison, did, for Jan. 12, 1814, and March 4, 1815. Then the tradition lapsed, until Abraham Lincoln revived it in April 1862 with no specific date for participants other than “the next weekly assemblages in their accustomed places of public worship.” The following year, after the Union victories in July at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, he declared a Thanksgiving for Aug. 6, 1863. A few months later, he declared another Thanksgiving day for “the last Thursday of November,” and that set in motion our modern-day observances.
Things went along fine after that until Franklin Roosevelt, in 1939, decided to set Thanksgiving for a week earlier than usual. He saw this as a way to stimulate a Depression-era economy — an extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas would create an extra week of holiday sales. (Those were simpler times; now Christmas sales don’t respect the traditional Black Friday start date.) Critics dubbed the date “Franksgiving” and 22 states (especially those with Republican governors) declined to honor it. Three states — Colorado, Mississippi and Texas — observed both “Franksgiving” and the traditional Thanksgiving date. More turkey for everyone!
Now, Thanksgiving is set by federal law. And no one seems to have the qualms that Jefferson did about the holiday mixing church and state.
Jefferson did believe in macaroni and cheese, so even though he didn’t believe in Thanksgiving you can still thank him for the mac and cheese on your table this holiday. I wrote about that in last year’s Thanksgiving column.