Why Thanksgiving 2025 Feels Different: What Rituals Reveal About American Identity

 By Thomas Beckett Kane, Author

This Thanksgiving, something feels different as Americans gather around the table. The rituals are still there, turkey, football, family fights over politics, but the meaning underlying them all has shifted. Coming out of years of pandemic turmoil, lockdowns fracturing communities apart, and a national soul-searching over institutional trust, this Thanksgiving carries a weight that no other generation has ever seen.

As a historian who watched American freedoms erode during the pandemic response, I find myself reflecting on why this particular holiday endures when so much else has changed. What does it reveal about our identity as a nation? And can shared rituals help us reconnect after years that tested the very fabric of our social order?

The fragility of social order and the power of ritual

I have lived in Los Angeles during 2020 and thus have seen how quickly social order could collapse. Basic freedoms vanished overnight. The population was stirred into fear. Society plunged into chaos over a virus with a fatality rate under 0.2 percent. What I learned during those bewildering and terrifying months was that our way of life is but one "crisis" away from complete evisceration.

Yet in the midst of all this dislocation, one thing remained constant: the human hunger for contact and for ritual. When governments outlawed gatherings, families found ways to mark Thanksgiving nonetheless, often through screens or in disregard of arbitrary dictates. And that is telling, about human nature and about America.

Thanksgiving serves several vital functions:

• It grounds us in gratitude: When institutions failed us and trust evaporated, it was gratitude toward family, freedom, and simple pleasures that buoyed us.
  
• It transcends politics: It's neutral ground on which Americans of every stripe can come together, an anomaly in contrast to the increasingly politicized July Fourth or Memorial Day.
  
• It reinforces community bonding: Shared meals and rituals create the social fabric that authoritarian responses to COVID have almost torn apart.

Why Thanksgiving 2025 is an unforgettable occasion

This year's Thanksgiving arrives as Americans continue to grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic years. Families are still rebuilding relationships fractured by mandates that separated grandparents from grandchildren, by enforcement of policies that had no basis in science, by the demonization of those who questioned authority.

The lockdowns killed more people than they saved; school closures destroyed a generation of educational prospects; unelected bureaucrats seized unprecedented power. Yet those responsible faced absolutely no accountability. Instead, they moved on, pretending their policies were necessary and effective, hoping Americans would simply forget.

But Americans have not forgotten. This Thanksgiving, as we gather with family members we may have been prohibited from seeing during the darkest days of authoritarianism, we carry that memory. The holiday takes on new meaning as a celebration not just of historical gratitude, but of reunification after forced separation.

Rebuilding tradition in the aftermath

Across the country, families are working hard to rebuild traditions that were interrupted. Some are returning to in-person gatherings for the first time in years. Others are establishing new rituals that acknowledge what we have been through. Many are simply thankful for the freedom to gather without government interference.

This rebuilding is very important. As I put in my book "The Reckoning: A Definitive History of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Absurdities," the erosion of social connections during lockdowns had devastating consequences: depression, suicide, addiction, and isolation skyrocketed. Not only does rebuilding those connections through shared rituals like Thanksgiving feel enjoyable, but it's also a critical component of our social and psychological wellbeing.

It is the act of gathering itself that becomes a form of quiet resistance. Every family dinner, every shared meal, every moment of connection reaffirms our humanity in the face of policies that treat us as mere disease vectors to be managed by bureaucratic decree.

How gratitude shapes community identity

At root, Thanksgiving is about gratitude, a virtue that the authoritarian systems of the world seek to squash. Grateful people are more difficult to control. They recognize what they have, rather than nursing a manufactured grievance. They appreciate freedom, rather than demanding safety at any price.

This year, perhaps more than at any time in recent memory, Americans have cause to feel truly thankful. We are thankful for:

• The right to assemble without seeking permission.
  
• Surviving family members who have faced both the virus and the devastating response to it.
  
• Resilience of human connection in the face of policies designed to isolate us.
  
• Gradual restoration of normalcy, however imperfect.
  

This kind of gratitude reinforces community identity. When we acknowledge what we've been through together, when we celebrate simple freedoms that were taken for granted before 2020, we reinforce bonds that hold communities together. We remember that social order is fragile and worth protecting, not through authoritarian control, but through voluntary association and mutual respect.

A warning and a hope

Thanksgiving 2025 feels different because we are different. We've seen how swiftly freedom can disappear. We've experienced the corrosive effects of fear-driven policy. We've watched institutions we trusted reveal their authoritarian impulses. But we've also discovered the resilience of human connection and the enduring power of shared rituals.

As we gather this year, we carry with us a warning and a hope. The warning: those authoritarian impulses revealed in the pandemic didn't disappear when the emergency ended; they're waiting for the next crisis as an excuse for even greater restrictions on liberty. The hope: by keeping our traditions, strengthening our communities, and refusing to forget what happened, we will prevent such overreach from succeeding again.

Thanksgiving endures because it speaks to something fundamental in the American character, a belief in gratitude over grievance, community over control, freedom over safety. This year, as we pass the mashed potatoes and argue about football, we're doing more than following tradition: we're affirming that human connection cannot be destroyed by bureaucratic decree, that families are more important than mandates, and that shared rituals matter precisely because they connect us to something larger than ourselves.

For an in-depth look at how the pandemic years tested American institutions and freedoms, visit thomasbeckettkane.wpcomstaging.com or find "The Reckoning: A Definitive History of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Absurdities" on Amazon.

About The Author
Thomas Beckett Kane is a historian and author of "The Reckoning: A Definitive History of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Absurdities." Having studied history at New York University and served in the military, he witnessed firsthand the authoritarian responses to COVID-19 while living in Los Angeles. His work focuses on documenting the erosion of freedoms during the pandemic years and ensuring that future generations understand what really happened.