Thanksgiving: Let's Party Like it's 1621

Human creatures can be notoriously ungrateful. Often, we think we would be grateful if only we had more than we do. If we had more money, or different families, or better health or looks or cars or what have you, we would surely be appreciative of our blessings. This is routinely disproved by reality. The poor, hungry man is immensely thankful for a scrap of bread or a cup of soup, while the rich man picks contemptuously at his lobster. Ah, but Thanksgiving Day gives us the perfect opportunity to at least pretend to be thankful for the good things we have been given (or, for the naturalist, the things which Chaos and Old Night have been pleased to spit our way at random. How does Thanksgiving dinner go down for those chappies, anyway?), even if we're tremendously ungrateful the rest of the year.

Friends, we’re Bing Crosby. You know, in that one scene from Holiday Inn? Wait, you don’t know? Well, go, watch it, and sin no more! Anyway, Bing sits down on Thanksgiving to eat a whole turkey by himself. He’s feeling mighty blue, because his buddy Fred Astaire stole his girl (again). It’s a great scene: Bing puts on a record of himself singing “I’ve Got Plenty to be Thankful For” and mocks his own song while he eats. “Are you kidding? Like what?” he asks his recorded self. He then criticizes, “you’re a little flat, too.” Turning to the turkey on the platter in front of him he says, “You know, you’re better off than I am!” The movie is on YouTube. The Thanksgiving scene is near the end, around the 1:48:00 mark. You can thank me later. 

The Bing on the record has something of the right idea; Bing on camera with his turkey sounds more like us a lot of times. Or maybe Bing and I are the only ones who sometimes want to trade places with roasted turkeys? No, I refuse to believe that.

Every schoolchild knows the story of the first Thanksgiving. Or at least, they know whatever version of it is being shilled in the schools these days. Anyway, what were the Pilgrims thankful for? Not starving to death, for one. When the happy story of Pilgrims and Indians sitting down for a thanksgiving feast gets told, what often gets left out is the bit about the brutal, bitter winter those Pilgrims had just endured. They had arrived at Plymouth in late 1620, just weeks before winter. That first winter claimed the lives of half of them. Of the original one hundred pilgrims, only fifty survived until that First Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 (see, half. I told you I could do the maths). They had all lost family members, friends, colleagues. One hundred is a pretty small, tightknit group, and it goes without saying losing half in less than a year must have been unimaginably devastating and heart-wrenching.

Above: Mayflower Passengers
Below: Those who survived until the first Thanksgiving

Life was hard. It’s hard now still. But for most of us, not quite that hard.

Edward Winslow, one of the Plymouth colonists, wrote:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest 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 we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

They rejoiced. They feasted. They thanked Almighty God for His providence, for providing for them, for granting them the abundance of their first harvest, and most importantly, for granting them the freedom from the impositions of the Church of England, and the ability to worship God according to His Word, as their consciences convicted them.

Friends, have we not as much for which to be thankful? Have we not more? Life itself is a gift. Every breath we breathe is a gift from God. Let us gather with friends and family, and rejoice as William Bradford and Plymouth did so many years ago. Let our hearts overflow with gratitude to the Lord, and with Christian charity towards one another.

“O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

Let’s party like it's 1621.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!