Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Dec 17, 1903

Note and Comment

By Editor

THE tendency to elevate national holidays to the level of things regarded as sacred, which has been apparent for some years, appears in a reference by The Northwestern Christian Advocate to Thanksgiving-day football games. The editor says, “It is to be hoped that last week witnessed the end” of such games. “Such use of the day set apart for national Thanksgiving to God and of family reunions is regarded by many as desecration,” he adds, “and a decided opposition is being created.” He quotes the Rev. F. W. Gunsalus as saying in his Thanksgiving sermon that “many look forward to this day because on it they intend to attend the college football game, when instead they should be in church.” A further objection given by The Advocate is that “thoughtlessly and unintentionally such games are an insult to the president of the United States, at whose request the day is set apart for thanksgiving, and to the churches and people who undertake to comply with that request.” It is not clear to us how a failure to comply with the president’s request to attend church on Thanksgiving day, or even to indulge in a football game, can constitute an insult to the president, especially when the president himself does not go to the Thanksgiving services, as we are informed was the case last Thanksgiving. The tendency to invest the chief executive with religious authority, making it his prerogative to direct the people in the matter of paying their obligations to God, and holding it an insult to him not to worship according to his directions, is a tendency strangely at variance with the spirit of republican government, and suggestive of ancient Rome with its pontifex maximus. Such incidents are straws showing the direction of the wind.