The NFL’s Thanksgiving games are a spectacular display of America’s ‘God and country’ obsession
By James K.A. Smith November 23 at 6:00 AM Thanksgiving has always been one of the high holy days of American civil religion. Its rituals are surprisingly widespread — pilgrimages home through packed airports; gatherings of family and friends (and attendant tensions that are the stuff of Hollywood rom-coms); the dining room altar on which the turkey is supped, then a long day of drifting in and out of consciousness while hours and hours of football flicker in our darkening dens. Our Thanksgiving traditions reflect the country’s mix of secularization and religious fervor — what theologian William Cavanaugh calls “migrations of the holy.” In a secular age, our religious impulses aren’t diminished; they just find new devotions: consumption, the self, the nation. Now, the NFL — in all its popularity and current controversy — sets the script for our Thanksgiving Day litany. It gives us something to worship. Of course, the typical symbols and traditions of Thanksgiving h...