So the imaginary “war on Christmas” wasn’t enough. Donald Trump and Fox News are now accusing progressives of waging a war on Thanksgiving, too, based on, well, nothing. But do Trump and his band of bigots even understand what Thanksgiving is about? If they did, they would hate this most American of holidays.

After all, the Pilgrims were refugees fleeing persecution by the English monarchy, which at the time was still an autocratic regime. They were, in other words, exactly the kind of people Trump and company want to keep out.

Furthermore, the traditional portrait of the first Thanksgiving is as a moment of racial tolerance and multiculturalism: European immigrants sharing a feast with Native Americans. That moment didn’t last: Much of New England’s native population was wiped out over the next few decades. And such an outcome may well have been inevitable. But we still celebrate the tale of a benign meeting of races and cultures.

Thanksgiving became an official holiday thanks to an 1863 proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. This was only a few months after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation and just a few weeks before he would deliver the Gettysburg Address, in which he declared that America is a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. So Thanksgiving as we now celebrate it also commemorates the struggle to end slavery.