This week, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco re-opened a case that began in 2003 when Chinese emigre Lei Li was denied asylum by a Los Angeles immigration judge. Li, claiming he was persecuted and beaten for starting an underground Christian church in China back in 2001, had his credibility called in to question because he testified in his original hearing that Thanksgiving was a Christian holiday.
The judge presiding over the original hearing, who kind of sounds like a jerk and has obviously never had Thanksgiving with a bunch of Catholics, claimed no true Christian would believe that Thanksgiving was a religious holiday. According to the Chronicle, the more reasonable judges of the 9th Circuit pointed out that Abe Lincoln established the modern version of the holiday as "a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father" and not (as we thought) a time to praise the invention of green bean casserole with crumbled potato chips on top while condemning the cardinal sin of walnut-laced stuffing. So, yeah, we can see how that'd be confusing.
