And let the late debate begin.

Hi, I'm Michelle Cordero.

And I'm Rob Louie.

And welcome to a special edition of MassAF, where we're going to talk about the importance of Thanksgiving.

We have Arthur Millick with us.

Arthur is the Associate Director of Heritage's B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics. Arthur does

research and is an expert on America's founding principles. Thanks for joining us, Arthur.

Thanks for having me. So Thanksgiving is just days away, and I don't know about you guys, but I love Thanksgiving.

And even if my family isn't doing anything big or orchestrated, it's still always a fun day.

I just think that deliberate reflection on what I'm thankful for feels good.

And I hold my family close and we eat good food and we root for the cowboys.

And the cowboys always play on Thanksgiving because they're America's team.

And it feels American and it's great.

So Arthur, only a few countries set aside a day of national thanks.

Why do you think these reflection days are so important for our society?

Sure.

So taking a step back, the question is, why do we have national holidays at all?

And I think that our founders express themselves with a lot of clarity as to why.

One is that this is a time to unify the public mind, to elevate it above our private experiences, and to reflect together as a nation.

Nations need from time to time for their minds to be all at once unified on one common topic.

You have an experience of a kind of common fate and a faith, and it establishes a national character.

And I think that our two most famous and I think most important national holidays prove that.

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