Puritan Thanksgiving
Three days of deer, Indians, and gratitude
by Sally Cragin
Illustration by Lennie Peterson
Poor Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable
great-great-grandmother). She just got a grant to deliver a lecture about
Thanksgiving to Tritown school children, but she has nothing to say. The
trouble is, she applied to the Tritown Cultural Council to direct a Harvest
Festival, complete with jugglers, face painters, and the largest pumpkin in
Tritown. ("Old Man Tarbox is pretty big, round, and hairless," joked Hollis the
Mountain Man. "Ya really wanna give the prize to him?") But the committee
hemmed, hawed, dithered, and stalled past the season. Then, to her surprise,
they fired off an enormous check.
She was feeling beleaguered when she trudged up the Tritown Library steps and
pushed open the glass doors. Ozzie the Wiz (Tritown's resident sage, also a
librarian) was busy at a computer. He looked up at her stricken face.
"Ozzie," she began. "I'm desperate. I need to do a presentation about
Thanksgiving -- the real Thanksgiving -- and I'm on a deadline."
Ozzie nodded and pushed his spectacles back up his nose. "Well," he began, "I
just asked the EAD folks if any of them had the DTD compiled as a logic file
for the WordPerfect SGML module . . ."
Delia leaned over the desk and was tempted to take the lapels of her erstwhile
classmate in her hands, as Ozzie continued. "And the archivist who sent the
file also sent the on-line register for Tritown's 17th-century documents, which
undoubtedly mentions the social practices of the Puritans."
Delia was left unclenching her fingers, while Ozzie said smoothly, "These
papers are in our archives, downstairs. The idea of an official `thanksgiving'
was important to our forebears. Shall we go?"
"Thanksgiving, indeed," said Delia, following Ozzie down the steps.
WHEN THE MAYFLOWER sailed around the arm of Cape Cod, in December 1620, there
was more bad weather ahead. According to William Bradford, who became the first
governor of the colony, that first winter was blustery with much rain. Many of
the settlers preferred to stay on the Mayflower, anchored more than a mile
offshore, rather than take their chances on land. "Cold and wet lodging has so
tainted our people (for scarce any of us were free of vehement coughs) as if
they could continue long in that state, it would endanger the lives of many,
and breed disease and infection amongst us," he wrote. Nearly half of the 102
passengers died; but reports sent to England stressed the rich potential of the
territory rather than the weather and the temperature.
The following year the surviving Pilgrims, with the assistance of Massasoit's
tribe, hunted and fished and planted grain and vegetables with a vengeance.
Puritan Edward Winslow commented, "Our corn did prove well, and God be praised,
we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our
peas not worth the gathering for we feared they were too late sown." No matter,
there was nearly a peck of grain a week for each survivor.
As the harvest approached, the small band of settlers began "to fit up their
houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and
strength and had all things in good plenty," according to Bradford. This
community shared responsibility for work and food-gathering, whether
agriculture, fishing or hunting; and settlers famously mixed with the Indians.
Of course, work stopped every Sunday, in honor of the Sabbath. (The Pilgrims
had appalled the Mayflower sailors by ceasing their explorations of the
wilderness on Sunday.) Yet their bounteous first summer was heartening after so
tragic a winter.
"There was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter
approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward
decreased by degrees)," wrote Bradford, who was ever-mindful of the natural
resources of the new land. Among the birds taken were wild turkeys (mentioned
by Bradford), and goose, duck, crane, and swan. Winslow's letters inform us
that the Pilgrims even sampled eagle "which tasted like mutton." With a surplus
of grain and an abundance of seafood, berries, and fruits, the group was more
confident and, more to the point, grateful about surviving another year.
In 1621, the idea of a day spontaneously set aside for expressing gratitude to
the Almighty appealed mightily to the Puritans who otherwise eschewed the usual
sacraments of the Anglican and Catholic churches. They regarded holidays like
Easter and especially Christmas with a distaste bordering on loathing.
"Foolstide," they called it, and a "wanton Baccanalian feast." Christmas was
not God's idea but man's prerogative, and the secular components of the holiday
-- jollity, drinking, gift-giving, and the neo-pagan celebration called "the
Lord of Misrule" -- irritated these sober reformers.
Indeed, on December 25, 1620, just five days or so after weighing anchor in
the New World, the Pilgrims went to work as if that day was any other. (The
following year, a group of visiting non-Puritan sailors was told by Bradford
that though their "conscience may not let you work on Christmas [but] my
conscience cannot let you play while everybody else is out working." The year
after that, a few younger Puritans attempted to celebrate and were chastised by
Bradford. There were undoubtedly other attempts at Yuletide gaiety, but in
1659, the leaders of the Bay Colony dispensed with the whole business by making
the holiday illegal.)
Yet in 1621, here were the settlers, reduced in number, but surrounded by the
rewards of their hard work. Surely this was a cause for celebration.
Pragmatists to the end, the Pilgrims decided that it would be appropriate to
give thanks to both benefactors: God and Massasoit's tribe. Winslow wrote about
a gathering with "their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for
three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer,
which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the
captain and others."
Such a "day of thanksgiving" was not anathema to the Puritans, as it gave them
an opportunity to create a holiday with as many religious overtones as they
liked. But, in keeping with their anti-celebratory philosophy, days of
thanksgiving were few and far between. The next great event that we can trace
to our current holiday Thanksgiving came in 1676, when the colonies held a
feast to celebrate the routing of King Philip (son of Massasoit!), whose
garrison war had terrified the settlers that winter. This "thanksgiving" was
proclaimed by the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, on June 20.
(A touch warm for turkey, perhaps.)
More than a century later Thanksgiving became an official state-sanctioned
event, when President George Washington assigned November 26, 1789, as "A Day
of Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer." Washington intended this holiday to
celebrate the fusion of God's will and the birth of the United States. "That we
may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for his Kind
care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a
nation . . . for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have
been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and
happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted." It is not
known whether Washington celebrated with turkey, but you can jolly well bet no
Indians were invited for a weekend hootenanny.
HOLLIS PUT DOWN his drumstick-shaped doughnut at Happy's Coffee and Qwik-stop
(30 kinds of doughnuts, including "festive" shapes at appropriate times, 20
kinds of lottery tickets, one kind of coffee). "So if Washington's Thanksgiving
is about celebrating America's independence, doesn't that mean it's really the
Fourth of July?" he asked Delia Ellis Bell, who was recovering from her school
presentation.
"Something like that," she said wearily. "I think the funniest part is how
straight-edge the Puritans were; yet their own, carefully scripted and
God-fearing Thanksgiving has turned into an overture for the hysteria of
Christmas shopping."
Hollis took another bite and said, "I don't know, Delia. A three-day party
with Indians and plenty of venison sounds like a pretty rowdy holiday to me.
Puritan, or not."
Sally Cragin gives thanks this week to the Plimouth Plantation Museum;
Shakespeare's Festive Comedy by C.L. Barber; and Puritans at Play
by Bruce C. Daniels. These resources make the 17th century sound like more
fun than this one. Well, kinda.