Suzanne's Journal

11.20.01
Those Pilgrims were no tender flowers. When I was a Freshman in college, Dr. Barbara Seidman had us read Of Plymouth Plantation out of the Norton Anthology of American Literature. I've never really gotten over it. It is the most comprehensive primary source available on Plymouth, written by Governor William Bradford. You have no idea what those guys went through until you've read it.

Read it. Go on. I'm not kidding.

Here, let me provide a tantalizing excerpt:

There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the sea-men, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be condemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly.

But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses light on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

It did not pay to mess around on the Mayflower. No, sirree. Of course, Of Plymouth Plantation is not a big favorite in your average postmodernist circles, so you may want to cover your copy in a plain brown wrapper before taking it out amongst the Intolerant Tolerants.

These were wild, brutish times. And if you ask me (which no one ever does, but just in case it happens unexpectedly some day, I should probably have an Opinion on the Pilgrims ready at hand), the Pilgrims rocked. No, they were not very sophisticated or enlightened in their treatment of Native Americans, women, or turkeys. But God is in the business of enlightening and maturing people, and seems to work best with people who aren't already too full of themselves to make room for Him.

So anyway, the Pilgrims had that first Thanksgiving. If you really want to find out about the history of Thanksgiving in the United States, a really good resource is Plimoth-on-Web, which is the website for Plimoth Plantation, the living history museum of 17th-century Plymouth. (See their site, too, for an explanation of the two different spellings of "Plymouth.")

Ooh, this just in from my helpful friend Clark, who has been trying to sort out the origins of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. He writes:

I've done some more digging, and here's how it actually went. Sarah Josepha Hale was the first editor of The Ladies' Magazine and an accomplished writer. She penned a little children's poem of which you might have heard called Mary Had a Little Lamb. She did spend nearly 40 years writing thousands of letters to state and national officials. She started in the 1820s, so she actually helped influence Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Yep, that's right. Abraham Lincoln gave a Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863. Here's a good excerpt:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

(Wow, that second bit there was one long sentence.) I know, I know, I shouldn't cheat by filling up an entire day's worth of journal with other people's ideas. But my own thoughts on Thanksgiving revolve around these things I've been reading. Another great Internet resource for Thanksgiving is Caleb Johnson's Mayflower Pages. He has passenger lists, biographical information, writings by the Pilgrims . . . all kinds of interesting stuff. But here's one thought of my own:

Happy Thanksgiving to you.