|
America's Thanksgiving tradition dates back to 1621 when the first
Pilgrims gave thanks in
Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Photo: World History
Archive/Newscom)
The Daily Signal
Here’s Why We
Should Still Celebrate the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving
Jarrett Stepman
November 20, 2017
For most American families, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved
ones, eat delicious food, and perhaps watch some football.
But not everyone is pleased with the celebration of this holiday, and
some have taken to maligning its “originators,” the Pilgrims.
An editorial in Al Jazeera labeled Thanksgiving a “thoroughly
nauseating affair,” one that is “saturated with disgrace.” Other
articles have called the Pilgrims genocidal toward Native Americans, or
argued that the original idea of a Thanksgiving feast is a “myth.”
“Debunking” the nature and origin of Thanksgiving seems to be turning
into its own cottage industry.
But the Pilgrim Thanksgiving story is based on real events. The small
band of religious dissenters who crossed an ocean to a dangerous new
world have, rightly, been given special prominence in the origin story
of the United States.
A year after the Pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts, Gov.
William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving. As historian Rod
Gragg noted:
The Pilgrims were not the first Europeans to hold a thanksgiving event
in the New World—although they appear to have been the first to do so
in New England … It was the Pilgrims of Plymouth, however, who would be
credited with establishing America’s distinctive Thanksgiving
holiday—thanks to a joyful observance sometime in the autumn of 1621.
The Pilgrims gathered for a three-day feast with about 90 local
Wampanoag Indians to celebrate a bountiful harvest following a year of
toil (over half of the Pilgrims had died since they set out for America
in 1620).
Though the food on the menu excluded modern items like pumpkin pie and
cranberry sauce, those who gathered for that Thanksgiving likely ate
wild turkey, among other foods common in the area like venison and
shellfish.
While later conflicts would ensue between the Pilgrims’ descendants and
the descendants of the Indians who feasted with them, the initial
contact between the cultures was positive and beneficial.
Political misunderstandings unfortunately led to future conflicts—in
particular King Phillip’s War—in which atrocities were committed by
both sides.
The Pilgrims would certainly be foreign to the conventions of modern
America. They were, after all, a different people who lived in a
harsher world than ours. But they don’t deserve to be maligned as
genocidal monsters, nor should we dismiss the fact that they set
incredibly beneficial norms for a future American culture.
Though America’s Thanksgiving conventions have morphed and evolved over
the years, Thanksgiving has retained a permanent connection to the
Pilgrims of New England. Many of the traditions they passed on have
become integral to what is now the cultural heritage of the United
States.
The Pilgrims came to America as part of a quest to be distinct. They
set out to the New World to establish a new religious, social, and
political order—to be free from the constraints of the Church of
England, and free from what they saw as the corrupting influences of
Holland, where they were staying temporarily.
It wasn’t necessarily religious liberty or pluralism that the Pilgrims
sought, but space to create a society based on strict Protestant
Christian teachings. As Massachusetts Bay leader John Winthrop once
exclaimed in a sermon, the new colonies would be as a “city upon a
hill.”
The Puritans wanted to be a beacon of light in a fallen world. “The
eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop said.
Nearly 400 years later, the idea of America as a kind of promised land
continues to resonate.
The other great legacy the Pilgrims left us was a tradition of
political consent and the seeds of republican government.
The Mayflower Compact, a relatively simple document, established a kind
of covenant between the citizens of the new colony. It was the first
such document in the New World creating a “civic body politic” through
clear, written guidelines. It was an indirect antecedent to the
Constitution of the United States and our tradition of placing laws
above men.
Undoubtedly, the modern holiday of Thanksgiving has evolved from being
a regional and haphazard holiday to a nationally celebrated one.
Notable New England orators, such as Daniel Webster, kept the Pilgrim
flame alive in the early 19th century by singing songs of remembrance
of their way of life on “Forefathers’ Day,” a Thanksgiving precursor
that is still celebrated in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
But Thanksgiving as we know it never became a formal holiday until
1863, when President Abraham Lincoln nationally recognized it. Magazine
editor Sarah Josepha Hale had advocated a national Thanksgiving holiday
for decades.
Thanksgiving has since grown to become a significant part of our
nation’s shared cultural inheritance. Though our customs have evolved
over the years, Thanksgiving has retained a permanent connection to its
origins with the Pilgrims of New England—and for that, we can be
thankful.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
|
