This will be a Thanksgiving unlike any other, not just because of a resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because of an upwelling of hostility toward the holiday itself. Both of these threats must be defeated—the virus because it threatens our lives and our prosperity, and the war on Thanksgiving because it threatens the fabric of our national identity. Fortunately, the attacks on Thanksgiving are based in part on some easily refutable claims.

The first battle in the war on Thanksgiving was the effort to undermine Columbus Day. Columbus is an easy target. Someone else would have "found" this land at some point if he hadn't. Columbus wasn't even the first—Vikings had visited the Americas hundreds of years earlier. And he, like practically every other explorer, behaved in ways that shock the modern conscience. It is no wonder that statues in Chicago and elsewhere have come down and that many places celebrate "Indigenous Peoples Day" in lieu of Columbus Day. If it ended there, there could have been an easy peace.

Thanksgiving is the next front in this culture war. The going will be tougher and the stakes higher, since this holiday is an American original. Other than July 4th (which may be next on the list), Thanksgiving is the only major holiday not based on a religion. Americans of all faiths celebrate it together, and there is something deeply unifying about knowing that every family in every corner of the country is eating (more or less) the same meal and sharing in the same traditions. In a time when e pluribus unum is increasingly undermined by political and social factions, Thanksgiving is a tie that binds.