Thanksgiving and Fast Day

Every year, as Thanksgiving approaches, I wish that the holiday could be stripped of its false Pilgrim/Wampanoag trappings and restored to its original meaning, as simple a day of gratitude. I think this will probably only happen, however, if we revive the lost holiday that was once paired with it, and which made its meaning plain: Fast Day, which fell on a Thursday in April. I've been making a quiet push to revive this old Puritan day of atonement since 2003, when I led a group of my divinity students on a Fast Day observance, called in response to the Iraq war. I've written about Fast Day before, its history and meaning, here:

https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/thanksgiving-day-remember-fast-day-dean-grodzins.