Fasting 005: Fasting on Thanksgiving Day

This year, the American holiday of Thanksgiving happens to fall on the first day of the Nativity fast as it is observed by those on the Julian calendar. Those on the new calendar - New Julian, as it were - will have already completed the first two weeks of the Nativity fast. In fact, those on the new calendar are faced with this situation every year, unlike the old calendarists who have to deal with it only on occasion. What is an Orthodox Christian to do?

Archbishop Iakovos Coucouzis of blessed memory, who was the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America from 1959 to 1996, promulgated a decree offering a general dispensation from fasting for the celebration of Thanksgiving Day. The faithful are urged to immediately return to fasting after the Thanksgiving meal - perhaps, in an effort to address the tradition of eating leftovers for several days following the feast. Even though this decree applies only to those under the omophorion of Greek archbishops, the clergy and faithful of other jurisdictions in the United States seem to have started following this practice - albeit, in an ad hoc way and mostly as a verbal S.O.P. - apparently, having found no better way to address the problem.

As the reason for such generous dispensations, it is often pointed out that the holiday of Thanksgiving is quasi-religious - that is to say, Americans offer thanks to God on this day - and that even the very name of this holiday should evoke in Orthodox Christians thoughts of the Eucharist. I personally find these musings somewhat disingenuous. It is not self-evident to me that Thanksgiving, the way it is celebrated in the secular democracy of the United States today, has much to do with any religion - the murky Puritan origins of it and present-day Southern Baptist sensibilities notwithstanding. Even those who are actually thankful for something, may not be thanking God per se, but just feeling thankful in general, as is common with humans. To be sure, there are some who really do mark the day with a prayer of thanksgiving, but they also do the same on New Year’s Day, Fourth of July, or on any other fitting occasion. Thankfully, there are people like that.

But even if Thanksgiving were in fact a religious holiday, it is still not clear that it would warrant a complete dispensation from fasting. We celebrate the religious holiday of the Annunciation during Lent without the dispensation for turkey, for example. We also offer thanksgiving - the holy Eucharist - on every Sunday during the Nativity fast without resorting to pecan pie and ice cream. In other words, whatever it is that is special about Thanksgiving, it is not its religious nature.