Rituals of Consubstantiation--Reflections on President Trump, "Thanksgiving Day 2025; A Proclamation from the White House"

 

Pix Credit here (Addams Family Values)

President Trump has, like many Presidents before (and likely after) the time of their office holding, issued a Proclamation: Thanksgiving Day 2025. It is comfortably ordinary in its sentiments, especially when in the extraordinary times in which the Republic now finds itself, it is perhaps the ordinary and the comforting that is desired, if only for the time it takes offer the sacrifice and consume the ritual meal that is the Republic's observance of this most welcome HolyDay. 

Pix credit here (Rockwell, 1943)

And so, in what has come to be a time honored tradition for American presidents with respect to all holy days of obligation on the political calendar of this Republic, President Trump has heralded the coming of Thanksgiving. I use those terms in their ancient senses since that is precisely what the President has undertaken through proclamation--that is a public calling out (usually by a herald, crier, or other servant of a household tasked with that office) of that which must be made known to those who may be within earshot. On this holy day of obligation is one is expected (if one can) to avoid labor for others and to attend a feast-gathering of some sort of human community or collective (traditionally a family, but one's family today is what one makes it, by whatever means and through the realization of whatever principle  that is achieved) for the purpose of giving thanks to those people or powers who merit or expect this public expression. It is, then, not a national day for mourning but for thanks, for expressing gratitude where gratitude is merited in accordance with whatever belief system is required to rationalize that conclusion in a way that accords with the objective (one felt rather than thought)--to acknowledge  appreciation for something (tangible or intangible) that might be thought kind or otherwise positive. 

Pix credit here (Addams Family Values)

Commentators remind us, generally, that "Commensality - eating and drinking at the same table - is a fundamental social activity, which creates and cements relationships. It also sets boundaries, including or excluding people according to a set of criteria defined by the society." (here). That statement reminds us that mood and objective make for the signification of a thing--one can stress both the negative (exclusion) or the positive (inclusion) within the inevitable human condition of the contradiction of collectivity, that some one or something is always left out (one perspective) or has every intention to avoid (another perspective) the ritual, and with it an acknowledgement of its norms. Solidarity, within human communities, then, more often than not, and especially within the construction of cultural and political community, necessarily, as the Chinese Marxist-Leninists more bluntly put t at the heart of their normative ideological constructs, between patriotic and destructive/foreign elements. 

Americans often tend to show thanks through food--a ritualized meal with symbolic meaning (gratitude) grounded in memory (and reenactment) to make physical the symbolic acts of coming together to consume food (and not each other) (on the semiotics of eating generally eg here).  And Thanksgiving is often seen as a pinnacle of the cycle of days devoted to giving thanks for both the bounty of the Republic and of the sacrifices made by many and in many different ways, to bring that Republic forward to the state of development in which it finds itsef, one hopefully (at least by enough people) to suggest forward movement on the Republic's inevitable path toward the deal of itself. In this case, like many others, the object is ritual solidarity among a community (on the politics of this sort of solidarity among modern indigenous Bolivian communities here). The central element of the ritual is the sacrifice of the produce of the Earth, which is then cooked and ingested by those who take part in the ritual and for whom the ritual consumption makes the meal something more than  what it may appear to an outsider.  It is an act of consubstantiation (a semiotic unity) rather than transubstantiation (a conversion of a thing into its representation) and the more powerful for it--we are what we eat in the sense that we partake of the body of the nation even as we consume its ritual manifestations in food. It is a wonderfully semiotics concept (which religion got to first)--the idea that an object (tangible) and its signification (also an object but intangible) can co-exist simultaneously within the space space/time. That, in essence is the communion, of sorts, of the ritual ingestion of the body of the Republic in an act that reveals its essence--a thankfulness for being here and in it. 

President Trump's Proclamation 2025 invokes a consubstantiation of a different sort, perhaps. One starts with divinam voluntatem (God wills it)--that invocation of an exogenous source from which the  auctoritas (influence and social position sometimes as a reflection of sometimes as a function of office) and potestas (formal institutional lawful power) associated with a perceived imperium of the office of the Present of the United States might be invoked by the human temporarily and currently serving as the human manifestation of that representative role. 

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And what is invoked? Ecce homo--the divine humanity inscribed on all things, good and bad (Eccl. 5:8-9; "If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they. Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field."). President Trump focuses on blood sacrifice: from out of carnage and perhaps evil (as those things are understood from time to time), something bountiful emerges. In the President's words (or at least the words of those whose sacrifice produced those words: "From the pilgrims who settled our continent and the patriots who won our independence on the battlefield to the pioneers who tamed the west and the warriors who have preserved our freedom in distant lands, the spirit of gratitude and grit embodied by those who celebrated the first Thanksgiving more than 400 years ago have stood at the very heart of what it means to be an American." (Proclamation: Thanksgiving Day 2025). The Presidency, and indeed, the Republic, is a vessel, within which "In every generation since, this spirit of reverence, trust, and gratitude has preserved our way of life and made America the strongest, greatest, and most resilient Nation the world has ever known." (Ibid.).

The President follows this rationalizing normative foundation with, also customary, an annual assessment of the progress from one annual meal sacrifice to another:  "This year, God has bestowed abundant blessings all across our land and indeed the entire world. As we give thanks to Him, we continue to advance our Nation through strong leadership and commonsense policy." The consubstantiation of the President and the divine; of the Republic and the person, is as old as the formation of ancient political collectives.  It is, in that sense, comforting. Some, though, might have though the spirit of the divine was more democratically dispersed among all of God's children gathered around the ritual meal.  And, indeed, that is a message inherent in the words put out by the President--all ritual observances require an intermediary through which it is possible to amplify the divine word. The Presidency, then, assumes a double representative characteristic--it is at once a space incarnating the people and also one transmitting the divine. 

And so the President reminds the people of this Republic--each gathered together to perform their portion of the national ritual sacrifice of flesh made idea and a manifestation of the solidarity of the Republic through shared norms invoked in food offerings consumed as are the ideas they represent--that as "we prepare to celebrate 250 glorious years of American independence, this Thanksgiving, we summon the faith, resolve, and unflinching fortitude of the giants of American history who came before us.  We vow to build a future that echoes their sacrifice.  Above all, we offer our endless gratitude to Almighty God for His love, grace, and infinite blessings."  

Best wishes to those who celebrate by partaking in a meal that reminds us that we consume not just food, but also we consume the idea that the food embodies made more potent by the rituals of its ingestion that become part of the food as well--feeding body, spirit, and community  

 

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THANKSGIVING DAY, 2025

Proclamations

November 25, 2025

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

In 1789, just years after America’s triumph over tyranny in the Revolutionary War, President George Washington established the first National Day of Thanksgiving, declaring “the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”  Decades later, in the midst of the bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln implored the Nation to join in unity for “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”  In every generation since, this spirit of reverence, trust, and gratitude has preserved our way of life and made America the strongest, greatest, and most resilient Nation the world has ever known.

From the pilgrims who settled our continent and the patriots who won our independence on the battlefield to the pioneers who tamed the west and the warriors who have preserved our freedom in distant lands, the spirit of gratitude and grit embodied by those who celebrated the first Thanksgiving more than 400 years ago have stood at the very heart of what it means to be an American.

This year, God has bestowed abundant blessings all across our land and indeed the entire world.  As we give thanks to Him, we continue to advance our Nation through strong leadership and commonsense policy.  As a result, the American economy is roaring back, we are making progress on lowering the cost of living, a new era of peace is sweeping around the world, our sovereignty is being swiftly restored, and the American spirit is coming back greater and more powerful than ever before.

As we prepare to celebrate 250 glorious years of American independence, this Thanksgiving, we summon the faith, resolve, and unflinching fortitude of the giants of American history who came before us.  We vow to build a future that echoes their sacrifice.  Above all, we offer our endless gratitude to Almighty God for His love, grace, and infinite blessings.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 27, 2025, as a National Day of Thanksgiving.  I encourage all Americans to gather, in homes and places of worship, to offer a prayer of thanks to God for our many blessings. 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.

                              DONALD J. TRUMP