and the first Thanksgiving
November 24, 2009 (Tuesday)
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated this week. I thought about writing a blog describing the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony, and as I researched the subject was introduced again to words that appear when one is discussing it – words like pilgrim, puritan, etc. The word, pilgrim, is fairly easy to analyze, coming from the Latin of long ago, and generally meaning “a stranger in a foreign land,” or something like that. The folks in American history who observed the first Thanksgiving were certainly “pilgrims,” because they had landed on these shores in a ship named, “Mayflower,” and were the only non-natives on this soil. They had faced hardships, sickness and death on board the ship, and after coming ashore, more of the same. They did not call that first feast, “Thanksgiving,” but they gave thanks to God at that meal as they did at every meal.
Those pilgrims were all “Puritans,” in their case a word describing religious and political dissenters from England, but a word which had originally been used to describe those whose religious beliefs moved them to separate from the established Anglican and Catholic churches. They were part of a broader group called, “anabaptists,” which simply meant “re-baptizers,” and referred to many groups which had distanced themselves theologically from the churches closely tied to the structures of state government. They grew in strength and numbers and faced opposition from the English kings. Their separatist beliefs involved a lifestyle that emphasized personal holiness to such an extent that they were disliked by many. Consequently, some of them began leaving the country, and some of those were on the Mayflower, and subsequently observed that first Thanksgiving in 1621.
The American Observance of Thanksgiving Day came later. Today it’s Turkey, Football and a national holiday, creating a long weekend that includes the busiest shopping day of the year. The first Thanksgiving was quite different. Click here to read about it if you like.
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See a series of articles on these subjects here: http://www.pilgrimhall.org/