| The following column was republished in The River Reporter on November 25, 1999. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thanksgiving is the time of family gathering, when we give thanks to the Lord for all our blessings, of which, we here in the U.S., have many.
The first such gathering in the New World of which we have a record took place in the Plimouth (so they spelled it at that time) Plantation Colony in what we today call Massachusetts. This first coming together occurred in 1621, following the harvest.
This group of people, known variously as the Strangers, Separationists and Pilgrims, were unprepared for living in the wilderness. Forced to flee England because of religious persecution, these religious dissidents had accepted the hospitality of the ever-tolerant Dutch, but found these kind people to be non-believers in the faith of these Pilgrims. After about six years in Holland, these religious fanatics decided to seek a new homeland across the Atlantic. They purchased two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, but the Speedwell proved to be unseaworthy, so they all crowded aboard the Mayflower.
Arriving at Plymouth Rock in 1620, they had no housing, no knowledge of how to farm the alien soil, and no idea of how to survive. That first winter saw about 50 percent of these religious refugees die of starvation and exposure.
The kindly Wampanoag Indians came forth and saved them. They taught the Pilgrims to fertilize their fields with fish, what was good to eat—corn, pumpkins and cranberries, to name a few—and what was bad to eat. The Wampanoags showed these poor souls how to hunt deer and turkeys and how to build temporary shelters of birchbark.
Among the casualties of that first winter was their governor, John Carver. His position then fell to William Bradford who, in 1621, following their first harvest season, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. For the record, the Wampanoags were invited to the first thanksgiving feast but a little later were driven off, their lands confiscated, and were shot on sight. Thanksgiving days were celebrated throughout the new country, but the first President to make it a national holiday was George Washington who in 1789 proclaimed November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day.
This custom of proclaiming a national thanksgiving died out until the year 1863 during the Civil War. A most extraordinary woman, Mrs. Sarah Hale, showed up on the scene. Mrs. Hale, in the male-dominated business world of that era, was the editor and publisher of the magazine "Godey’s Ladies’ Book" and the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb." She was a one-woman lobbyist. She nagged President Lincoln who was trying to run a war until he finally gave in to her latest idea, a proclaimed national day of thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. So it became, and so it has been ever since. The only glitch occurred in 1939 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the urging of retail storekeepers, who wanted a longer shopping season, moved the day to the third Thursday of November.
Wow! You would have thought that a comet had fallen on the United States! Newspapers used their largest type for headlines to denounce this violation of Thanksgiving. People picketed the White House and Congress denounced this insult to American tradition. In 1941, both houses of Congress voted together to return Thanksgiving to the last Thursday of November.
We Americans have much to be thankful for. A free country of the people, by the people, for the people. Sure, some things could be improved. But as Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill so aptly put it: "I don’t know if a democracy is the greatest form of government, but it is far ahead of whatever is in second-place."
Enjoy Thanksgiving and try not to overeat.
