If you think Independence Day is America's defining holiday think again. Thanksgiving deserves that title hands-down.

My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.

I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house we had an enormous feast and then I killed them and took their land.

The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

My fondest memories are generally the day after Thanksgiving. I get the total decorating Christmas itch.

Christmas is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas is pretty much a man-made holiday.