Thanksgiving Myths Deconstructed

My intent for this weeks post was a kind of warm, fuzzy, gee... isn't it nice that it's Thanksgiving message. My memories of the Thanksgiving tradition, learned in a Chicago public elementary school, had made this my favorite holiday. But first, I wanted to delve more deeply into Thanksgiving, and learn more. I'm almost sorry I did.

Thanksgiving Day commemorates the communal sharing of food and friendship between Pilgrims and Native Americans in the Plymouth Bay Colony in 1621, right? The Pilgrims invited their new friends to a feast of celebration. One wonders how this peaceful relationship between two peoples could have turned so horribly sour in such a short time thereafter.

Let's examine some facts and fallacies:

- When the Mayflower landed in the New World, the passengers were virtually all Pilgrims. Wrong. There were 102 colonists aboard the Mayflower. Only 35 were what we today call Pilgrims.

- The 'Pilgrims' actually referred to themselves as 'Saints' (humble types, eh?), while others referred to them as 'Separatists'. A few of the other Mayflower settlers referred to themselves as 'Puritans', in that they wanted to purify the Church. It wasn't until after the Revolution that the term 'Pilgrims' was applied to the Saints, and they became what the spin doctors of the time painted as the image of the new country's morality and Christian ideals.

- The date and location of the first communal feast was not 1621 and was in the Plymouth Colony. According to the History News Network, "Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1598 -- twenty-three years before the Pilgrims' festival." "Then again, you may want to go to Virginia.. At the Berkeley Plantation on the James River they claim the first Thanksgiving in America was held there on December 4th, 1619....two years before the Pilgrims' festival... " A certain U.S. President from Massachusetts officially recognized Virginia's claim in 1963.

- The weary settlers from the Mayflower were supposed to join up with Virginian tobacco plantations. However, due to either heavy storms, or errors using their charts, they landed in what was to become Massachusetts.

- They did not heroically carve a civilization out of the wilderness. They settled on land that had been occupied by an Indian tribe that had either departed the region, or had died. Our intrepid colonists appropriated the Indian belongings they found there. A Native American survivor, Squanto, showed them the corn fields, and explained how to survive in their new environment.

- The colonists did not originate the idea of a fall festival. Native American tribes had been celebrating harvest time for centuries.

- Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until President Lincoln, looking for a way to fire up patriotic spirit during the dismal days of the War Between the States, made it one. His decree was on the same day that he ordered Union troops to march against the Sioux tribe in what now is Minnesota.

- The Pilgrims' clothing was black and white with buckles on their hats and shoes. Wrong. Buckles did not come to be worn until the late years of the 17th century, and black and white clothing was worn only on Sundays. Their clothes would have been more earth tones like green and brown, with the occasional blue and beige.

The concept of a day set aside for a special meal to share with friends and family is a wonderful thing. But let's delete the phony public relations aspects of what we pretend was the first Thanksgiving. A little honesty would be just the right spice for the fourth Thursday in November.


Next Friday: Music keeps us young.