Fast and Thanksgiving Days of Plymouth Colony
The Separatists who founded Plymouth Colony observed three holy days; the weekly Sabbath, the Day of Humiliation and Fasting, and the Day of Thanksgiving and Praise. The latter two were held for special circumstances. A series of misfortunes meant that God was displeased, and the people should both search for the cause(s) and humble themselves before him. Good fortune, on the other hand, was a sign of God’s mercy and compassion, and therefore he should be thanked and praised. Over time, with the influx of new colonists and new faiths, as well as the political changes in England and New England, the holiday changed, becoming more secular. By the end of the century, the colonial government established a cycle of annual spring Fast Days and autumn Thanksgivings.
Early fast days and thanksgiving days were similar in many respects. They were called by either church or civil officials or the two working together. Occasionally, officials reacted to one overwhelming situation, such as an epidemic. More frequently, there were a number of reasons. For example, causes for a 1641 Day of Humiliation in the Barnstable church were: “In regard of the wett & very cold Spring, as also for the quelling of Strange & heretical tenets raised principally by the Ffamilists, as also for the healing of the bloodye Coffe amonge children especially at Plimouth.”1 A 1685 Day of Thanksgiving in the Plymouth church was held for “continuance of spirituall & civill liberties, a good harvest notwithstanding a threatening drought, & for health.”2 In the minds of the Plymouth colonists, that mixture of events were all traceable to one source – God – and his relationship with the community. Relief from misfortune would come (they hoped) after reconciliation with God through fasting, prayer and repentance. Fortunate events required public expression of gratitude with praise and thanksgiving.
The first Day of Humiliation for the Plymouth colonists actually occurred before the Separatist congregation left the Netherlands. As described in Bradford’s history, “So being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation, their pastor taking his text from Ezra viii.21: ‘And there by the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance.’ Upon which he spent a good part of the day very profitably and suitable to our present occasion, the rest of the time was spent in pouring out our prayers to the Lord with great fervency, and with abundance of tears.”3 This type of fast day was not a response to misfortune, but an appeal for God’s aid at the beginning of a new enterprise. Later colonial churches would call these fast days when choosing new officers and creating or renewing their covenant.
While the harvest celebration held in Plymouth Colony in 1621 has been mistakenly referred to as the “First Thanksgiving” since the 1800s, the first Thanksgiving Day as the Separatists understood it occurred in 1623. As with many later New England Days of Thanksgiving, it followed a Day of Humiliation. The events of that summer, described in colonist Edward Winslow’s Good Newes from New England, show clearly how the Separatists saw their relationship with God and used these two holidays to reconcile and affirm that relationship.
In 1623, the colony was still struggling to survive. The colonists were critically low on food. For months they had been expecting a ship with supplies and additional colonists. The spring planting of Indian corn and beans began well. By mid-July, however, “it pleased God, for our further chastisement, to send a great drought, insomuch as in six weeks after the latter setting there scarce fell any rain; so the stalk of that which was first set began to send forth the ear, before it came to half growth, and that which was later was not like to yield any at all, both blade and stalk hanging the head, and changing color in such a manner, as we judged it utterly dead. Our beans also ran not up according to their wonted manner, but stood at a stay, many being parched away, as though they had been scorched before the fire. Now were our hopes overthrown, and we discouraged, our joy being turned into mourning.” Additionally, the expected ship had not been heard of for three months, “only the signs of a wreck were seen along the coast, which could not be judged to be any other than the same.” The colonists were devastated. “The most courageous were now discouraged, because God, which hitherto had been our only shield and supporter, now seemed in his anger to arm himself against us.”
These misfortunes “moved not only every good man privately to enter into examination with his own estate between God and his conscience, and so to humiliation before him, but also more solemnly to humble ourselves together before the Lord by fasting and prayer. To that end a day was appointed by public authority,....” Winslow did not describe the religious exercises, but stated that they lasted “some eight or nine hours.” The next morning “distilled such soft, sweet, and moderate showers of rain, continuing some fourteen days, and mixed with such seasonable weather, as it was hard to say whether our withered corn or drooping affections were most quickened or revived.” Captain Myles Standish, returning from the north, brought further good news. The supplies and new colonists were safe, although delayed, and again on their way.
Their prayers answered, the colonists thought “it would be great ingratitude, if secretly we should smother up the same, or content ourselves with private thanksgiving for that, which by private prayer could not be obtained. And therefore another solemn day was set apart and appointed for that end; wherein we returned glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God, which dealt so graciously with us;....”4
This, then, was the first Thanksgiving Day held in Plymouth Colony. It occurred most likely at the end of July and consisted of a lengthy church service. Probably, there was no feasting. Bradford lamented in his history, that when the new colonists arrived soon after, the “best they could present their friends with was a lobster or a piece of fish without bread or anything else but a cup of fair water.”5 Descriptions of later observances in surviving church records provide more details of the probable structure of the services.
Reverend Cotton described a 1684 Plymouth Fast Day service “May 2: the day of Fasting & Prayer was solemnly attended by the whole church in the Pastors house. The Pastour first prayed & preached, then Mr Fuller prayed: Afternoone the Elder prayed, Secretary Morton, Deacon Finney & Thomas Faunce; ... Deacon Morton spake to the church about Intemperance, & long sitting at ordinaryes etc the Elders & Bretheren that spake to it all agreed in their Testimony against those evills & their desires that God would helpe all to more care & watch fullnesse in all respects: the 122 Psalme was sung, & the Pastour minding of the Lords supper to be the next Sabbath, he then ended with a prayer;...”6 Reverend Cotton did not mention food in connection with this fast day, although it was permissible to eat after the final prayer on a fast day. An English visitor to a 1660 Salem fast day for the ordinations of a teacher and elder said, “After the exercise, I was invited to the elder’s house, where was good company and good cheer [food].”7
At a 1636 Day of Thanksgiving held by Reverend Lothrop’s Scituate church: “in ye Meetinghouse, beginning some halfe an houre before nine, & continued until after twelve a clocke, ye day beeing very cold, beginning with a short prayer, then a psalme sang, then more large in prayer, after that an other Psalme, & then the Word taught [sermon], after that a prayer – and then a psalme, - Then makeing merry to the creatures, the poorer sort beeing invited of the richer.”8 About a 1639 Thanksgiving Lothrop said, “our praises to God in publque being ended, wee devided into 3 companies to feast togeather.”9 As early as the 1630s, therefore, some congregations were feasting after the service.
Over the 17th century, Plymouth Colony held many of these special observances as circumstances required. Beginning in the 1680s, officials called for public thanksgiving and fast days “for the mercies of the yeare” on an annual basis. In the 1700s, they settled into a cycle of spring Fast Days and autumn Thanksgivings. The Massachusetts government abolished the state’s April Fast Day in 1894. Its annual Thanksgiving Day, held on the last Thursday of November, was absorbed by the national Thanksgiving Day established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The latter was the first nationally declared Thanksgiving Day for the United States, which is still observed on the fourth Thursday each November to the present day.
Showing posts with label thanks giving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thanks giving. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
THE STORY OF STERILE FOOD TREE
The Story of the Sterile Food Tree
The telephone pole that captures my attention nursed no life-long ambition to telecommunications greatness. It was once a Douglas fir towering nearly 80 feet above the forest floor. Its trunk sways gently as the winds pass over its mountainside. Its great arms, clothed with successive layers of green foliage, shade the understory plants.
Yet one day the sound of a bulldozer disturbs its mountain fastness. The whine of chainsaws sends a chill through the trees, and they fall one by one, fodder for the mill downstream. Rrrrrr. Chainsaws lop off each limb that protrudes, and mighty jaws lift the giant amputee on board a truck headed for the mill.
Inside the sound is deafening. The debarker whines and bucks as it slices through branch stubs and reduces them to submissive knots. Layer after layer of bark and outer wood are peeled back until the trunk is naked and smooth. Its base is plunged into a vat of burning creosote and preservative forced into its pores with unremitting pressure.
Violence now complete, the new telephone pole is stacked with brother poles on yet another truck. And one day he feels himself drop to the side of the road. A crane stretches his top to the sky and lowers his feet into a deep hole. The pole is now pierced by climbing spikes and crossbeams, connectors and insulators, then strung with humming high voltage lines. Phone conversations and TV shows pass under his artificial limbs, but he does not hear them.
For the most part, he stands in stillness and ponders his fate. An occasional car whishes by, a hawk rests upon his head for a few moments waiting for rodents to stir in the field below. But mostly he stands stoic and sterile -- never to grow again, never to bear cones, never to see young ones grow up between his toes. All he can look forward to are the cracks and fissures that come with dryness and age. He will feel the water of snow storms melt and trickle down those cracks into to his feet. It is there, underground, that he will eventually rot and decay 30 to 40 years hence. When he can, the pole lives in the fragrant memories of his past, not in the stark hopelessness of his present.
My life hasn't exactly gone as I had planned either. But I realize that the telephone pole silhouetted against the sky has found a new meaning to his life that he had no reason to expect.
Birds flutter near his top. Now, one of them inches down the pole and suddenly inflicts a new violence upon him. Bang, bang, bang. The woodpecker drives his sharp bill deeper and deeper into the pole's fibrous tissues. Bang, bang, bang. The hole is deep enough now. Peck, peck, peck. The bird splinters the sides of the hole to widen it. It flies away momentarily, but now returns with something in its beak. It jams an acorn into the new hole until it is firmly wedged. And now the bird and his friends begin again. Bang, bang, bang. Peck, peck, peck.
As I look carefully, I can see that this particular telephone pole has been a favorite of generations of Acorn Woodpeckers. Every deep crack, every widening crevice is jammed with hundreds of acorns from the Live Oak tree across the road. Every hole whittled out in years gone by is restuffed with an acorn against the coming winter. I try to count them, but soon give up. Their number is beyond hundreds and must be more than a thousand -- enough to feed an entire colony of woodpeckers the whole winter long. They will not starve, for their food tree -- their sterile food tree friend -- sustains them. The childless fir will live on in the woodpeckers and their hatchlings.
And as I see the pole surrounded by its woodpeckers, bearing a harvest not its own for a family not its own, I sense it has grown more philosophical, more thankful with age. Few trees aspire to be telephone poles, you know, but for many that is their destiny.
Often we can feel only pain and loss. We suffer. We hurt. We feel sorry for ourselves. But sometimes, if we can grasp it, God is creating for us a new and wonderful life through that which has died. Who would think that an aging pole could be thankful for a colony of woodpeckers? Who indeed?
The telephone pole that captures my attention nursed no life-long ambition to telecommunications greatness. It was once a Douglas fir towering nearly 80 feet above the forest floor. Its trunk sways gently as the winds pass over its mountainside. Its great arms, clothed with successive layers of green foliage, shade the understory plants.
Yet one day the sound of a bulldozer disturbs its mountain fastness. The whine of chainsaws sends a chill through the trees, and they fall one by one, fodder for the mill downstream. Rrrrrr. Chainsaws lop off each limb that protrudes, and mighty jaws lift the giant amputee on board a truck headed for the mill.
Inside the sound is deafening. The debarker whines and bucks as it slices through branch stubs and reduces them to submissive knots. Layer after layer of bark and outer wood are peeled back until the trunk is naked and smooth. Its base is plunged into a vat of burning creosote and preservative forced into its pores with unremitting pressure.
Violence now complete, the new telephone pole is stacked with brother poles on yet another truck. And one day he feels himself drop to the side of the road. A crane stretches his top to the sky and lowers his feet into a deep hole. The pole is now pierced by climbing spikes and crossbeams, connectors and insulators, then strung with humming high voltage lines. Phone conversations and TV shows pass under his artificial limbs, but he does not hear them.
For the most part, he stands in stillness and ponders his fate. An occasional car whishes by, a hawk rests upon his head for a few moments waiting for rodents to stir in the field below. But mostly he stands stoic and sterile -- never to grow again, never to bear cones, never to see young ones grow up between his toes. All he can look forward to are the cracks and fissures that come with dryness and age. He will feel the water of snow storms melt and trickle down those cracks into to his feet. It is there, underground, that he will eventually rot and decay 30 to 40 years hence. When he can, the pole lives in the fragrant memories of his past, not in the stark hopelessness of his present.
My life hasn't exactly gone as I had planned either. But I realize that the telephone pole silhouetted against the sky has found a new meaning to his life that he had no reason to expect.
Birds flutter near his top. Now, one of them inches down the pole and suddenly inflicts a new violence upon him. Bang, bang, bang. The woodpecker drives his sharp bill deeper and deeper into the pole's fibrous tissues. Bang, bang, bang. The hole is deep enough now. Peck, peck, peck. The bird splinters the sides of the hole to widen it. It flies away momentarily, but now returns with something in its beak. It jams an acorn into the new hole until it is firmly wedged. And now the bird and his friends begin again. Bang, bang, bang. Peck, peck, peck.
As I look carefully, I can see that this particular telephone pole has been a favorite of generations of Acorn Woodpeckers. Every deep crack, every widening crevice is jammed with hundreds of acorns from the Live Oak tree across the road. Every hole whittled out in years gone by is restuffed with an acorn against the coming winter. I try to count them, but soon give up. Their number is beyond hundreds and must be more than a thousand -- enough to feed an entire colony of woodpeckers the whole winter long. They will not starve, for their food tree -- their sterile food tree friend -- sustains them. The childless fir will live on in the woodpeckers and their hatchlings.
And as I see the pole surrounded by its woodpeckers, bearing a harvest not its own for a family not its own, I sense it has grown more philosophical, more thankful with age. Few trees aspire to be telephone poles, you know, but for many that is their destiny.
Often we can feel only pain and loss. We suffer. We hurt. We feel sorry for ourselves. But sometimes, if we can grasp it, God is creating for us a new and wonderful life through that which has died. Who would think that an aging pole could be thankful for a colony of woodpeckers? Who indeed?
TRADITION OF GIVING THANKS
Native Traditions of Giving Thanks
The American custom of giving thanks did not begin with the arrival of European colonists. Spirituality was (and is) a deeply sacred and personal part of Wampanoag life. Everything is sacred, and giving thanks for the Creator’s gifts is an integral part of daily life. From ancient times up to the present day, the Native people of North America have held ceremonies to give thanks for successful harvests and other good fortune. According to the oral information of tribal elders, giving thanks was the primary reason for ceremonies or feasts.
Giving thanks was an important part of the celebrations, called Nickommo, which are still held by the Wampanoag. Give-away ceremonies, feasting, dancing and sports and games were common features of these occasions. Give-away ceremonies show gratefulness to the Creator who provides for the people and makes possible the blessings celebrated. The act of giving away material things shows respect and caring for others, while reminding the participants that material objects are only secondary to one’s spiritual life.
Thankfulness was woven into every aspect of Wampanoag life. If an animal was hunted for food, special thanks were also given to the Creator and to the spirit of the animal. If a plant was harvested and used for any purpose, or a bird or a fish, if an anthill was disrupted, gratitude and acknowledgement were given for the little ones’ lives. To this day it is the same with most Native people
The American custom of giving thanks did not begin with the arrival of European colonists. Spirituality was (and is) a deeply sacred and personal part of Wampanoag life. Everything is sacred, and giving thanks for the Creator’s gifts is an integral part of daily life. From ancient times up to the present day, the Native people of North America have held ceremonies to give thanks for successful harvests and other good fortune. According to the oral information of tribal elders, giving thanks was the primary reason for ceremonies or feasts.
Giving thanks was an important part of the celebrations, called Nickommo, which are still held by the Wampanoag. Give-away ceremonies, feasting, dancing and sports and games were common features of these occasions. Give-away ceremonies show gratefulness to the Creator who provides for the people and makes possible the blessings celebrated. The act of giving away material things shows respect and caring for others, while reminding the participants that material objects are only secondary to one’s spiritual life.
Thankfulness was woven into every aspect of Wampanoag life. If an animal was hunted for food, special thanks were also given to the Creator and to the spirit of the animal. If a plant was harvested and used for any purpose, or a bird or a fish, if an anthill was disrupted, gratitude and acknowledgement were given for the little ones’ lives. To this day it is the same with most Native people
AS AMERICAN AS PUMPKIN PIE
As American as Pumpkin Pie
A November afternoon, 1910… Two immigrant factory workers are eating lunch. “Marcella,” says one woman to her friend, “why do we have this Thursday as a day off?” “I don’t know,” her friend replies. “Something about the chicken holiday.” This is how the mother of one Plymouth resident was introduced to Thanksgiving.1
This tradition of American culture must have seemed bewildering to newcomers. As reformers pondered how to teach new immigrants how to become good Americans, many looked to examples from the past. Since the early 20th century, the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving have been used to teach both new Americans and school children about American history and values. This is just one of many ways that people have looked at the holiday over time.Prior to the mid-1800s, Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the 1621 harvest celebration, Pilgrims or Native People. Thanksgiving started as a traditional New England holiday that celebrated family and community. It descended from Puritan days of fasting and festive rejoicing. The governor of each colony or state declared a day of thanksgiving each autumn, to give thanks for general blessings. As New Englanders moved west in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they took their holiday with them. After the harvest, governors across the country proclaimed individual Thanksgivings, and families traveled back to their original homes for family reunions, church services and large meals.
The Pilgrims, Wampanoag and Thanksgiving were first linked together in 1841, when historian Alexander Young rediscovered Edward Winslow’s account of the 1621 harvest celebration. The account was part of the text of a letter to a friend in England, later published in Mourt’s Relation (1622). Young isolated the description of the harvest celebration, and identified it as the precedent for the New England Thanksgiving. At this point, Young’s claim had little impact on the popular concept of Thanksgiving, however.
In the 1800s, battles between pioneers and Native People trying to hold onto their land colored images of Thanksgiving. Images of Natives and colonists sharing a meal did not fit with contemporary scenes of violence between pioneers and Natives in the west. While there were a couple of images showing a “First Thanksgiving” with Pilgrims and Natives together, such scenes were not common until after the end of the “Indian Wars” in the 1890s. The association between Pilgrims, Natives and Thanksgiving became stronger after 1890, when the census revealed the western frontier to be closed, and the “Indian Wars” ended.
By the late 1800s, America was changing, and the image of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving became useful history. Starting in the 1880s, immigration increased dramatically. The new immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe, with different languages, religions and customs than the old-stock Yankees. Combined with other dramatic changes like growing industry and movement to cities, the large numbers of immigrants began to pose a threat to many Americans’ way of life. How could these newcomers be taught how to become good Americans? As in any time of crisis, people looked to the past for answers. By the early 20th century, the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving became a tool to teach immigrants and schoolchildren about America. One of the first private organizations to undertake “Americanizing” new immigrants was the Daughters of the American Revolution. As early as 1910, the group published a guide for new citizens. The 1913 revision included what they felt the immigrant “needs to know,” including history and civics.2 The Pilgrims’ contribution to American freedom was one of the many aspects of American history the DAR felt that immigrants should learn. While the DAR Manual for Citizenship didn’t specifically mention Thanksgiving, it set the stage for later efforts in education.Industries like the Ford Motor Company conducted Americanization classes for their employees. These classes included information about the Pilgrims. At the closing ceremonies of Americanization classes at Plymouth Cordage Company, Plymouh, Massachusetts, employees reenacted scenes in American history, including the landing of the Pilgrims.3
Settlement houses also tried to help immigrants by showing them American ways. One woman settlement house worker described teaching Greek immigrants about the holiday. “On the night of last Thanksgiving I spent some time and zeal in a description of the Pilgrim Fathers, the motives which had driven them across the sea… illustrated by stereopticon slides and little dramatic scenes.” In this instance, her audience, “absorbed in their Greek background of philosophy and beauty,” was not impressed!4
Another way to teach newcomers was through their children. Education reformers at the turn of the century set out to design curricula to teach children to become good citizens. The Pilgrims, as early immigrants, became prototypes for newcomers. Unlike other historic figures or groups of the past, the Pilgrims had a holiday associated with them. November became the time to teach all children, both immigrant and native-born, about Pilgrims and the associated holiday of Thanksgiving.
Frances Johnston’s photograph, Thanksgiving Day at the Whittier (1899), shows a classroom of African-American children from Hampton, Virginia, learning about the Pilgrims.While the Pilgrims’ connection to Thanksgiving had been made as early as 1841, the children were not learning about the harvest celebration of 1621. Instead, they were studying about the Pilgrims in general—building log cabins (long thought to be early Pilgrim housing) and reciting Felicia Hemans’ famous poem about the Pilgrims’ landing, “The Breaking Waves Dashed High.”Education magazines and books of plays contained Thanksgiving skits, with patterns for the stereotypical black and white costumes often associated with Pilgrims. In addition to Thanksgiving plays, children also learned through craft activities. Pearl Kazin, daughter of Jewish immigrants, described learning about Thanksgiving at New York’s P.S. 125: “We labored intently, fingers deeply stained and arms splotched to the elbows in brown paint, making the first Thanksgiving—the huge Pilgrim family, at an enormously long table…With crayons and paint we smeared a lavish feast.”5
Thanksgiving school plays, as well as images of a single long table from textbooks and art, have become part of our holiday traditions. From a tool used to teach school children and immigrants, this simplified view of Thanksgiving has become a familiar symbol in American culture, used in all sorts of media from cartoons to greeting cards. It is important to remember that this view is part of the history of the holiday, rather than historic fact.
A November afternoon, 1910… Two immigrant factory workers are eating lunch. “Marcella,” says one woman to her friend, “why do we have this Thursday as a day off?” “I don’t know,” her friend replies. “Something about the chicken holiday.” This is how the mother of one Plymouth resident was introduced to Thanksgiving.1
This tradition of American culture must have seemed bewildering to newcomers. As reformers pondered how to teach new immigrants how to become good Americans, many looked to examples from the past. Since the early 20th century, the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving have been used to teach both new Americans and school children about American history and values. This is just one of many ways that people have looked at the holiday over time.Prior to the mid-1800s, Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the 1621 harvest celebration, Pilgrims or Native People. Thanksgiving started as a traditional New England holiday that celebrated family and community. It descended from Puritan days of fasting and festive rejoicing. The governor of each colony or state declared a day of thanksgiving each autumn, to give thanks for general blessings. As New Englanders moved west in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they took their holiday with them. After the harvest, governors across the country proclaimed individual Thanksgivings, and families traveled back to their original homes for family reunions, church services and large meals.
The Pilgrims, Wampanoag and Thanksgiving were first linked together in 1841, when historian Alexander Young rediscovered Edward Winslow’s account of the 1621 harvest celebration. The account was part of the text of a letter to a friend in England, later published in Mourt’s Relation (1622). Young isolated the description of the harvest celebration, and identified it as the precedent for the New England Thanksgiving. At this point, Young’s claim had little impact on the popular concept of Thanksgiving, however.
In the 1800s, battles between pioneers and Native People trying to hold onto their land colored images of Thanksgiving. Images of Natives and colonists sharing a meal did not fit with contemporary scenes of violence between pioneers and Natives in the west. While there were a couple of images showing a “First Thanksgiving” with Pilgrims and Natives together, such scenes were not common until after the end of the “Indian Wars” in the 1890s. The association between Pilgrims, Natives and Thanksgiving became stronger after 1890, when the census revealed the western frontier to be closed, and the “Indian Wars” ended.
By the late 1800s, America was changing, and the image of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving became useful history. Starting in the 1880s, immigration increased dramatically. The new immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe, with different languages, religions and customs than the old-stock Yankees. Combined with other dramatic changes like growing industry and movement to cities, the large numbers of immigrants began to pose a threat to many Americans’ way of life. How could these newcomers be taught how to become good Americans? As in any time of crisis, people looked to the past for answers. By the early 20th century, the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving became a tool to teach immigrants and schoolchildren about America. One of the first private organizations to undertake “Americanizing” new immigrants was the Daughters of the American Revolution. As early as 1910, the group published a guide for new citizens. The 1913 revision included what they felt the immigrant “needs to know,” including history and civics.2 The Pilgrims’ contribution to American freedom was one of the many aspects of American history the DAR felt that immigrants should learn. While the DAR Manual for Citizenship didn’t specifically mention Thanksgiving, it set the stage for later efforts in education.Industries like the Ford Motor Company conducted Americanization classes for their employees. These classes included information about the Pilgrims. At the closing ceremonies of Americanization classes at Plymouth Cordage Company, Plymouh, Massachusetts, employees reenacted scenes in American history, including the landing of the Pilgrims.3
Settlement houses also tried to help immigrants by showing them American ways. One woman settlement house worker described teaching Greek immigrants about the holiday. “On the night of last Thanksgiving I spent some time and zeal in a description of the Pilgrim Fathers, the motives which had driven them across the sea… illustrated by stereopticon slides and little dramatic scenes.” In this instance, her audience, “absorbed in their Greek background of philosophy and beauty,” was not impressed!4
Another way to teach newcomers was through their children. Education reformers at the turn of the century set out to design curricula to teach children to become good citizens. The Pilgrims, as early immigrants, became prototypes for newcomers. Unlike other historic figures or groups of the past, the Pilgrims had a holiday associated with them. November became the time to teach all children, both immigrant and native-born, about Pilgrims and the associated holiday of Thanksgiving.
Frances Johnston’s photograph, Thanksgiving Day at the Whittier (1899), shows a classroom of African-American children from Hampton, Virginia, learning about the Pilgrims.While the Pilgrims’ connection to Thanksgiving had been made as early as 1841, the children were not learning about the harvest celebration of 1621. Instead, they were studying about the Pilgrims in general—building log cabins (long thought to be early Pilgrim housing) and reciting Felicia Hemans’ famous poem about the Pilgrims’ landing, “The Breaking Waves Dashed High.”Education magazines and books of plays contained Thanksgiving skits, with patterns for the stereotypical black and white costumes often associated with Pilgrims. In addition to Thanksgiving plays, children also learned through craft activities. Pearl Kazin, daughter of Jewish immigrants, described learning about Thanksgiving at New York’s P.S. 125: “We labored intently, fingers deeply stained and arms splotched to the elbows in brown paint, making the first Thanksgiving—the huge Pilgrim family, at an enormously long table…With crayons and paint we smeared a lavish feast.”5
Thanksgiving school plays, as well as images of a single long table from textbooks and art, have become part of our holiday traditions. From a tool used to teach school children and immigrants, this simplified view of Thanksgiving has become a familiar symbol in American culture, used in all sorts of media from cartoons to greeting cards. It is important to remember that this view is part of the history of the holiday, rather than historic fact.
THANK GOD
THANK GOD
"Let's go over the list once more," I mutter to myself at the check-out stand. "Oatmeal, frying chickens, and a half gallon of rocky road. Yuban® coffee and a couple loaves of Roman Meal® bread. A gallon of milk about rounds it out." The register whirrs. I plunk down my money.
"Thanks," I say to the checker.
"Don't thank me," the grocery checker chuckles. "You pays your money, you takes your choice."
No thanks needed? Your forefathers' hands caressed hard seed grains as they sowed freshly-turned furrows. They knew whom to thank.
"A man scatters seed on the ground," Jesus observed. "Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)
No wonder Pilgrims gave thanks.
But the average person lives too far from the soil to awe at amber waves of grain. I had glanced at my watch and tapped my foot while the checker worked slowly through the loaded grocery cart ahead of me. So what's to be thankful for? Shorter lines?
Yes, for starters. Women stand in lines for hours in Moscow to buy fresh fruit. The selection on our supermarket shelves would boggle the mind of a Mexican villager.
We thank God for a job to pay for our food--thousands are out of work. We thank God for a warm home and a table to eat at-the homeless live out of their cars at the park.
"But I work hard for what I have," you object. Yes, so does the Chinese peasant bending over in a cold rice paddy.
You pays your money, but you can't buy health. You pays your money, but you can't buy a son or a daughter. You pays your money, but you can't buy rain to water crops in Peoria and Des Moines.
Thank you God, for the gifts you've given which I have no inherent right to. Make me genuinely grateful. Amen.
"Let's go over the list once more," I mutter to myself at the check-out stand. "Oatmeal, frying chickens, and a half gallon of rocky road. Yuban® coffee and a couple loaves of Roman Meal® bread. A gallon of milk about rounds it out." The register whirrs. I plunk down my money.
"Thanks," I say to the checker.
"Don't thank me," the grocery checker chuckles. "You pays your money, you takes your choice."
No thanks needed? Your forefathers' hands caressed hard seed grains as they sowed freshly-turned furrows. They knew whom to thank.
"A man scatters seed on the ground," Jesus observed. "Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)
No wonder Pilgrims gave thanks.
But the average person lives too far from the soil to awe at amber waves of grain. I had glanced at my watch and tapped my foot while the checker worked slowly through the loaded grocery cart ahead of me. So what's to be thankful for? Shorter lines?
Yes, for starters. Women stand in lines for hours in Moscow to buy fresh fruit. The selection on our supermarket shelves would boggle the mind of a Mexican villager.
We thank God for a job to pay for our food--thousands are out of work. We thank God for a warm home and a table to eat at-the homeless live out of their cars at the park.
"But I work hard for what I have," you object. Yes, so does the Chinese peasant bending over in a cold rice paddy.
You pays your money, but you can't buy health. You pays your money, but you can't buy a son or a daughter. You pays your money, but you can't buy rain to water crops in Peoria and Des Moines.
Thank you God, for the gifts you've given which I have no inherent right to. Make me genuinely grateful. Amen.
PARTAKERS OF OUR PLENTY
Partakers of Our Plenty
For most Americans, a “traditional” Thanksgiving meal includes a turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and pumpkin pie (or sweet potato pie if you hail from the South.). While there are numerous regional and ethnic variations, this basic menu has not changed much in the last two hundred years. Nor is the standard menu much older than that. Our modern holiday fare bears little resemblance to the food eaten at the three-day 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth Colony, the event now recalled as the “First Thanksgiving.”
The Wampanoag and Plymouth colonists often ate wild turkey, however it was not specifically mentioned in connection with that 1621 harvest celebration. Edward Winslow said only that four men went hunting and brought back large amounts of “fowl” – more likely from the scenario to be seasonal waterfowl such as ducks and geese. And what about the stuffing? Yes, the Wampanoag and English did occasionally stuff the birds and fish, typically with herbs, onions or oats (English only).
If cranberries were served at the harvest celebration, they appeared in Wampanoag dishes, or possibly to add tartness to an English sauce. It would be 50 years before an Englishman mentioned boiling this New England berry with sugar for a “Sauce to eat with …Meat.” In 1621 England, sugar was expensive; in 1621 New Plymouth, there may not have been any of this imported spice at all.
Potatoes, which had originated in South America, had not yet made their way into the diet of the Wampanoag in 1621 (though the Wampanoag did eat other local varieties of tubers). By 1621, potatoes, both sweet and white, had traveled across the Atlantic to Europe but they had not been generally adopted into the English diet. The sweet potato, originating in the Caribbean, was cultivated in Spain and imported into England. It was a rare dainty available to the wealthy, who believed it to be a potent aphrodisiac. The white potato was virtually unknown by the average early 17th-century Englishman. Only a few gentlemen botanists and gardeners were trying to grow this colonial oddity.
But surely there was pumpkin pie to celebrate the harvest? Pumpkin -- probably yes, but pie – probably not. Pumpkins and squashes were native to New England. Certain varieties had been introduced from the Americas into Europe by 1500 where they gained widespread acceptance (as had turkey, another New World native). In Plymouth, the specific American varieties were new to the colonists, but hardly exotic. However, the fledgling Plymouth Colony probably did not possess the ingredients to make piecrust (butter & wheat flour) nor an oven in which to bake it. The now-familiar custardy pumpkin pie, made with pureed pumpkin, was several generations away from invention. The earliest written recipes for pumpkin pie came after 1621, and those treated the pumpkin more like apples, slicing it and sometimes frying the slices before placing them in a crust. (There were no apples in 1621 Plymouth, either. Apples are not native to North America.)
The typical menu of Thanksgiving dinner is actually more than 200 years younger than that 1621 celebration and reflects both the holiday’s New England roots and a Victorian nostalgia for an imaginary time when hearth and home, family and community, were valued over progress and change. But while we have been able to work out which modern dishes were not available in 1621, just what was served is a tougher nut to crack. The only contemporary description of the event by Edward Winslow tells us that they had seasonal wild fowl and the venison brought by the Wampanoag and presented to key Englishmen. The same writer is eloquent about the bounty of his new home (items in bold were available in the early autumn).
Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night, with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels ... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will; all the spring-time the earth sendeth forth naturally very good sallet herbs. Here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also. Strawberries, gooseberries, raspas, etc. Plums of tree sorts, with black and red, being almost as good as a damson; abundance of roses, white, red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed… These things I thought good to let you understand, being the truth of things as near as I could experimentally take knowledge of, and that you might on our behalf give God thanks who hath dealt so favorably with us.1
Another source describing the colonial diet that autumn said “besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had … since harvest, Indian corn.”2
Though not specifically mentioned as a food on the menu, corn was certainly part of the feasts. Remember that the harvest being celebrated was that of the colorful hard flint corn that the English often referred to as Indian corn. This corn was a staple for the Wampanoag and soon became a fixture in the cooking pots of New Plymouth. The English had acquired their first seed corn by helping themselves to a cache of corn from a Native storage pit on one of their initial explorations of Cape Cod. (They later paid the owners for this “borrowed” corn.) It is intriguing to imagine how the English colonists processed and prepared the novel corn for the first time in the fall of 1621. One colonist gave a hint of how his countrymen sought to describe and prepare a new grain in familiar, comforting terms: “Our Indian corn, even the coarsest, maketh as pleasant a meat as rice.”3 In other words, traditional English dishes of porridge and pancakes (and later bread) were adapted to be used with native corn.
In September and October, a variety of both dried and fresh vegetables were available. The produce from the gardens of New Plymouth is likely to have included what were then called “herbs:” parsnips, collards, carrots, parsley, turnips, spinach, cabbages, sage, thyme, marjoram and onions. Dried cultivated beans and dried wild blueberries may have been available as well as native cranberries, pumpkins, grapes and nuts. While many elements of the modern holiday menu are very different from the foods eaten in 1621, the bounty of the New England autumn was clearly the basis for both. The impulse to share hospitality with others and celebrate and give thanks for abundance transcends the menu. Edward Winslow’s final comment about the harvest of 1621, is a sentiment shared by many Americans on Thanksgiving Day: 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.
For most Americans, a “traditional” Thanksgiving meal includes a turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and pumpkin pie (or sweet potato pie if you hail from the South.). While there are numerous regional and ethnic variations, this basic menu has not changed much in the last two hundred years. Nor is the standard menu much older than that. Our modern holiday fare bears little resemblance to the food eaten at the three-day 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth Colony, the event now recalled as the “First Thanksgiving.”
The Wampanoag and Plymouth colonists often ate wild turkey, however it was not specifically mentioned in connection with that 1621 harvest celebration. Edward Winslow said only that four men went hunting and brought back large amounts of “fowl” – more likely from the scenario to be seasonal waterfowl such as ducks and geese. And what about the stuffing? Yes, the Wampanoag and English did occasionally stuff the birds and fish, typically with herbs, onions or oats (English only).
If cranberries were served at the harvest celebration, they appeared in Wampanoag dishes, or possibly to add tartness to an English sauce. It would be 50 years before an Englishman mentioned boiling this New England berry with sugar for a “Sauce to eat with …Meat.” In 1621 England, sugar was expensive; in 1621 New Plymouth, there may not have been any of this imported spice at all.
Potatoes, which had originated in South America, had not yet made their way into the diet of the Wampanoag in 1621 (though the Wampanoag did eat other local varieties of tubers). By 1621, potatoes, both sweet and white, had traveled across the Atlantic to Europe but they had not been generally adopted into the English diet. The sweet potato, originating in the Caribbean, was cultivated in Spain and imported into England. It was a rare dainty available to the wealthy, who believed it to be a potent aphrodisiac. The white potato was virtually unknown by the average early 17th-century Englishman. Only a few gentlemen botanists and gardeners were trying to grow this colonial oddity.
But surely there was pumpkin pie to celebrate the harvest? Pumpkin -- probably yes, but pie – probably not. Pumpkins and squashes were native to New England. Certain varieties had been introduced from the Americas into Europe by 1500 where they gained widespread acceptance (as had turkey, another New World native). In Plymouth, the specific American varieties were new to the colonists, but hardly exotic. However, the fledgling Plymouth Colony probably did not possess the ingredients to make piecrust (butter & wheat flour) nor an oven in which to bake it. The now-familiar custardy pumpkin pie, made with pureed pumpkin, was several generations away from invention. The earliest written recipes for pumpkin pie came after 1621, and those treated the pumpkin more like apples, slicing it and sometimes frying the slices before placing them in a crust. (There were no apples in 1621 Plymouth, either. Apples are not native to North America.)
The typical menu of Thanksgiving dinner is actually more than 200 years younger than that 1621 celebration and reflects both the holiday’s New England roots and a Victorian nostalgia for an imaginary time when hearth and home, family and community, were valued over progress and change. But while we have been able to work out which modern dishes were not available in 1621, just what was served is a tougher nut to crack. The only contemporary description of the event by Edward Winslow tells us that they had seasonal wild fowl and the venison brought by the Wampanoag and presented to key Englishmen. The same writer is eloquent about the bounty of his new home (items in bold were available in the early autumn).
Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night, with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels ... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will; all the spring-time the earth sendeth forth naturally very good sallet herbs. Here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also. Strawberries, gooseberries, raspas, etc. Plums of tree sorts, with black and red, being almost as good as a damson; abundance of roses, white, red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed… These things I thought good to let you understand, being the truth of things as near as I could experimentally take knowledge of, and that you might on our behalf give God thanks who hath dealt so favorably with us.1
Another source describing the colonial diet that autumn said “besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had … since harvest, Indian corn.”2
Though not specifically mentioned as a food on the menu, corn was certainly part of the feasts. Remember that the harvest being celebrated was that of the colorful hard flint corn that the English often referred to as Indian corn. This corn was a staple for the Wampanoag and soon became a fixture in the cooking pots of New Plymouth. The English had acquired their first seed corn by helping themselves to a cache of corn from a Native storage pit on one of their initial explorations of Cape Cod. (They later paid the owners for this “borrowed” corn.) It is intriguing to imagine how the English colonists processed and prepared the novel corn for the first time in the fall of 1621. One colonist gave a hint of how his countrymen sought to describe and prepare a new grain in familiar, comforting terms: “Our Indian corn, even the coarsest, maketh as pleasant a meat as rice.”3 In other words, traditional English dishes of porridge and pancakes (and later bread) were adapted to be used with native corn.
In September and October, a variety of both dried and fresh vegetables were available. The produce from the gardens of New Plymouth is likely to have included what were then called “herbs:” parsnips, collards, carrots, parsley, turnips, spinach, cabbages, sage, thyme, marjoram and onions. Dried cultivated beans and dried wild blueberries may have been available as well as native cranberries, pumpkins, grapes and nuts. While many elements of the modern holiday menu are very different from the foods eaten in 1621, the bounty of the New England autumn was clearly the basis for both. The impulse to share hospitality with others and celebrate and give thanks for abundance transcends the menu. Edward Winslow’s final comment about the harvest of 1621, is a sentiment shared by many Americans on Thanksgiving Day: 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.
THANKS GIVING DAY
THANKS GIVING DAY
A hot, glistening bird commands the laden table, as grandma calls everyone to dinner. Eight-year-old Jennifer proudly lugs her July-born sister to the table. Grandpa and dad get up slowly with a long backward glance to see the tight end catch a pass and be forced out of bounds at the twenty. The game continues in the background without them.
"Who'll say grace?" grandma asks. Grown-ups look awkwardly at each other in strained silence. Finally Uncle John snickers and parrots the word "grace," and laughter spills over the tension. Grandma steps in. "Jennifer, why don't you say the prayer you learned in Sunday School when you were in kindergarten." She recites. The feast begins.
Embarrassed silence replaces thanksgiving, gluttony displaces gratefulness. Thanksgiving--an expression of gratitude to God for benefits received--is too often absent from our hollow holiday. There is, however, an ancient custom which can reclaim the day.
We read, Jesus "took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples." At the Last Supper Jesus took bread and gave thanks, lifted the cup, gave thanks and offered it to His followers. Jesus always prayed before meals.
We can, too. A simple prayer of thanks at each family meal of the year will gradually restore thankfulness to us. As our children see us humble ourselves to thank our Creator, they too learn to be grateful. Robert Lintner said it well: "Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day."
This habit of family thankfulness can begin round our tables this Thanksgiving--the first of many prayers of thanks to be offered, not just by Jennifer, but by her thankful mother and father as well.
"Who'll say grace?" grandma asks. Grown-ups look awkwardly at each other in strained silence. Finally Uncle John snickers and parrots the word "grace," and laughter spills over the tension. Grandma steps in. "Jennifer, why don't you say the prayer you learned in Sunday School when you were in kindergarten." She recites. The feast begins.
Embarrassed silence replaces thanksgiving, gluttony displaces gratefulness. Thanksgiving--an expression of gratitude to God for benefits received--is too often absent from our hollow holiday. There is, however, an ancient custom which can reclaim the day.
We read, Jesus "took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples." At the Last Supper Jesus took bread and gave thanks, lifted the cup, gave thanks and offered it to His followers. Jesus always prayed before meals.
We can, too. A simple prayer of thanks at each family meal of the year will gradually restore thankfulness to us. As our children see us humble ourselves to thank our Creator, they too learn to be grateful. Robert Lintner said it well: "Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day."
This habit of family thankfulness can begin round our tables this Thanksgiving--the first of many prayers of thanks to be offered, not just by Jennifer, but by her thankful mother and father as well.
HAPPY THANKS GIVING
HAPPY THANKS GIVING
I've heard a lot of droopy prayers in my life. Hey, I've prayed a lot of them, too.
Prayers of desperation -- God, you've got to help me!
Prayers of self-pity -- God, things are so awful!
Prayers of resignation -- God, if you want to leave me unemployed, then I can't stop you!
But I'm learning how to pray a different kind of prayer -- prayer said with thanksgiving. I learned it from St. Paul who, writing from prison, taught me a most powerful lesson. He said,
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."1
Strange. Here he is suffering himself, yet he's telling me to pray with thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is the seasoning that makes our prayers edible to God. After all, who wants to hear people whine all the time? I've learned that you can't whine and give thanks in the same breath. Self-pity and thankfulness don't mix any better than oil and water.
In fact, mixing thanks with prayer somehow changes it. When we remember what God has done for us in the past and think about who he is in the present -- and express that in thankfulness -- our prayers become more gentle, more trusting somehow. Thankful prayers are offered with faith. And faith is an essential ingredient for prayers that God chooses to answer.
We remember the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving Day, not so much for their turkey dinner, but for the sheer faith that inspired them to give thanks in a year that saw nearly half their number die of sickness. Yet they prayed with thanksgiving.
When your annual day of feasting is over, you may bemoan your extra helpings of dressing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. But if you can hang on to the "thanks" part of Thanksgiving, you'll be a different person. Because when you learn to talk to God about your needs -- mixed with a healthy dose of heartfelt thanks -- then you have crossed the divide from whining at God to real prayer.
Happy thanks-giving!
I've heard a lot of droopy prayers in my life. Hey, I've prayed a lot of them, too.
Prayers of desperation -- God, you've got to help me!
Prayers of self-pity -- God, things are so awful!
Prayers of resignation -- God, if you want to leave me unemployed, then I can't stop you!
But I'm learning how to pray a different kind of prayer -- prayer said with thanksgiving. I learned it from St. Paul who, writing from prison, taught me a most powerful lesson. He said,
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."1
Strange. Here he is suffering himself, yet he's telling me to pray with thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is the seasoning that makes our prayers edible to God. After all, who wants to hear people whine all the time? I've learned that you can't whine and give thanks in the same breath. Self-pity and thankfulness don't mix any better than oil and water.
In fact, mixing thanks with prayer somehow changes it. When we remember what God has done for us in the past and think about who he is in the present -- and express that in thankfulness -- our prayers become more gentle, more trusting somehow. Thankful prayers are offered with faith. And faith is an essential ingredient for prayers that God chooses to answer.
We remember the Pilgrims on Thanksgiving Day, not so much for their turkey dinner, but for the sheer faith that inspired them to give thanks in a year that saw nearly half their number die of sickness. Yet they prayed with thanksgiving.
When your annual day of feasting is over, you may bemoan your extra helpings of dressing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. But if you can hang on to the "thanks" part of Thanksgiving, you'll be a different person. Because when you learn to talk to God about your needs -- mixed with a healthy dose of heartfelt thanks -- then you have crossed the divide from whining at God to real prayer.
Happy thanks-giving!
THANKSGIVING DAY
THANKSGIVING DAY
Turkeys and cornucopias and pilgrim hats. Seasoned stuffing hot from the oven. Creamed onions, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Uncles and aunts and cousins to play with. Grandmothers and grandfathers with family gathered round. Children waiting for the Great Pumpkin rise over Charlie Brown's pumpkin patch and dads watching college football. A day to relax and maybe rake leaves in the afternoon.
But Thanksgiving? How much will our celebrations tomorrow have to do with giving thanks?
A glance at the first Thanksgiving brings it all back. On December 21, 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock. Through the dead of winter the colony struggled with poor and meager food, strenuous labor, a biting wind that chilled to the bone, and the ravages of disease. Nearly half the 102 Mayflower passengers did not live to see Spring refresh Cape Cod Bay.
But God sent Indians--Samoset, Squanto, and Massasoit--to help the English settlers plant and hunt and fish. The bountiful harvest that autumn led Governor Bradford to invite the Indians to celebrate God's goodness. Ninety tall braves accepted the invitation to join the Pilgrims in a feast of Thanksgiving to God for His blessings.
The Pilgrims lived close enough to the soil to know how dependent they were on God's Providence. They had learned to thank God in the midst of the bitterness of winter past. And they were quick to thank Him during abundant blessing, too.
We teach our children to say "please" and "thank you" as the rudiments of courtesy, yet it is so easy to be rude and unthinking toward God. How often we forget to gratefully acknowledge His goodness towards us.
This Thanksgiving let your prayers and expressions of love rise toward your Heavenly Father.
"What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." (Psalm 116:12-13)
Turkeys and cornucopias and pilgrim hats. Seasoned stuffing hot from the oven. Creamed onions, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Uncles and aunts and cousins to play with. Grandmothers and grandfathers with family gathered round. Children waiting for the Great Pumpkin rise over Charlie Brown's pumpkin patch and dads watching college football. A day to relax and maybe rake leaves in the afternoon.
But Thanksgiving? How much will our celebrations tomorrow have to do with giving thanks?
A glance at the first Thanksgiving brings it all back. On December 21, 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock. Through the dead of winter the colony struggled with poor and meager food, strenuous labor, a biting wind that chilled to the bone, and the ravages of disease. Nearly half the 102 Mayflower passengers did not live to see Spring refresh Cape Cod Bay.
But God sent Indians--Samoset, Squanto, and Massasoit--to help the English settlers plant and hunt and fish. The bountiful harvest that autumn led Governor Bradford to invite the Indians to celebrate God's goodness. Ninety tall braves accepted the invitation to join the Pilgrims in a feast of Thanksgiving to God for His blessings.
The Pilgrims lived close enough to the soil to know how dependent they were on God's Providence. They had learned to thank God in the midst of the bitterness of winter past. And they were quick to thank Him during abundant blessing, too.
We teach our children to say "please" and "thank you" as the rudiments of courtesy, yet it is so easy to be rude and unthinking toward God. How often we forget to gratefully acknowledge His goodness towards us.
This Thanksgiving let your prayers and expressions of love rise toward your Heavenly Father.
"What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." (Psalm 116:12-13)
Friday, November 28, 2008
THE FUNDAMENTALIST THANKSGIVING SPECIAL
The FundamentaList Thanksgiving Special
A look back at the most important developments in the religious right over the past year.
Sarah Posner November 26, 2008 web only
1. In The Beginning ...
The FundamentaList launched in September 2007 with a question that would recur throughout the presidential campaign: Out of the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, whom would James Dobson endorse?
Dobson had just been reassured by the Internal Revenue Service that his personal endorsement of candidates did not jeopardize Focus on the Family's tax-exempt status. Throughout the GOP primary, the press hung on every possible signal emanating from Colorado Springs, convinced that the eventual nominee's emergence would hinge on Dobson's blessing. As it turned out, Dobson withheld judgment, finally endorsing Mike Huckabee when it was too late to make a difference. Some, including Huckabee himself, blamed Dobson and his allies in the religious right for failing to give Huckabee a boost when he needed it most to win the nomination.
Although Dobson remains the most recognizable name in the religious-right leadership, many other figures, less well known outside the movement, and a "Huck's Army" at the grass roots drove Huckabee's candidacy in 2008 and could drive religious-right support for another run in 2012. The fixation on Dobson's endorsement was a creation of the press, not real voters. Many grass-roots activists told me that his endorsement would be meaningful but not essential for their own decision. But Dobson wasn't the only religious-right figure withholding approval of a candidate, and because of the numerous fractures in the GOP base, including a serious split over Mitt Romney's and Mike Huckabee's conservative credentials, John McCain -- whose campaign looked like it had imploded in September of 2007 -- rose to the top of the pack.
As a result of his dithering, though, Dobson sabotaged his own relevance. Religious-right activists rallied around McCain before Dobson endorsed him, and propped up Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy before Dobson offered his seal of approval. In his new book laying out a blueprint for the future of the conservative movement that includes a crucial place for religious conservatism, Huckabee doesn't even mention Dobson's name.
2. The Emergence of Huckabee.
Although Huckabee lost the GOP primary, his run earned him the support of many prominent evangelicals, and many observers saw him as a possible running mate for McCain, or a future leader of a reconstituted religious right.
While Huckabee was passed over as McCain's running mate (in retrospect, perhaps an ill-conceived decision by McCain), he took numerous steps to position himself as a possible movement leader and/or presidential candidate for 2012 or 2016. He formed a political action committee, HuckPAC, in April, to fundraise for fellow Republicans, and he campaigned for McCain and congressional candidates. He scored a weekly television show on Fox News, later signed a deal for a radio show on ABC Radio Networks that will air next year, and published his post-election tell-all/roadmap for his political future, Do the Right Thing.
In the book, Huckabee lashes out against the "Faux-Cons" who opposed his candidacy and the writers at National Review, who found his worship of conservative economic orthodoxy lacking. He claims his grass-roots conservatives are the future of the movement and that "the uprising among non-Beltway conservatives is real."
To harness all that energy, he launched his Vertical Politics Institute, which is "dedicated to finding solutions to the many challenges our nation faces today," through the mobilization and involvement of the grass roots. It's not clear how, exactly, he's going to deploy his new populist foot soldiers, or how big his army is, but he is giving a big fat poke in the eye to the religious-right establishment and conservative elites.
3. The Pastor Problems.
One of the biggest stories about the intersection of the religious right and McCain's campaign was his endorsement by televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley, and his later rejection of them.
Longtime readers of the Prospect and The FundamentaList knew all about Parsley and Hagee before they were thrust into the campaign spotlight for their endorsements of McCain. Both the Prospect and God's Profits featured examinations of the men's careers, including the preaching of the highly controversial prosperity gospel, secret fundraising and finances, faith-healings, self-enrichment, lawsuits, authoritarianism, secrecy, calls for war and Armageddon, and, of course, hobnobbing with the Republican power elite. McCain's quest for their endorsement was straight out of the Republican playbook -- but the fact that Parsley had essentially campaigned for Bush in 2004 and Hagee had written a book endorsing Bush in 2000 was largely ignored amid the fascination with Hagee's description of the Catholic Church as a "great whore" and Parsley's claim that "Islam is a false religion."
In the YouTube age, though, clips from sermons rule the day, and McCain ultimately rejected Hagee because of one in which he lauded the Holocaust as part of God's plan, and Parsley for another showing him saying that destroying Islam was part of God's plan for America. The whole episode did more damage to McCain's career than Parsley's or Hagee's; as they soldiered on in their battle against Satan, McCain was denounced by the religious right for toying with their feelings and by the rest of the world for pandering to such people in the first place.
4. The Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin.
During her honeymoon with the Republican Party, Palin looked like she -- not Dobson -- would save McCain with the base.
Her conservative credentials were sealed by her decision to continue with a pregnancy when she knew the baby would have Down syndrome, and when she was picked as McCain's VP, Palin became the overnight darling of the religious-right base, which didn't even flinch at the mounting evidence of her utter lack of preparation or qualifications for high office. The religious right's greatest fascination with Palin remains not her political accomplishments (or lack thereof) but her motherhood, good looks, and her destruction of the mold of the submissive evangelical woman, even as wifely submission is, for many fundamentalists, biblically required.
More than any electoral event since Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential run, Palin's candidacy laid bare the deep divide between the religious right and the rest of America. That divide is, more than ever, an existential dilemma for the Republican Party.
5. Televangelist Investigations.
In November 2007, Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, launched an investigation into the financial practices of six prominent televangelists, questioning whether they had used tax-exempt donor funds for their own enrichment.
The targeted televangelists preach the prosperity gospel, or Word of Faith doctrine (as do Parsley and Hagee), through which the televangelists ask their followers to "sow a seed" (give them money) in order to "reap a harvest" (get a supernatural financial return on their investment). Grassley was interested not in the doctrine but in whether all those seeds were going to mansions, luxury cars, and private jets for the televangelists.
Although McCain got a lot of heat for seeking Parsley's and Hagee's endorsement, Huckabee got very little for appearing on Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's television program, letting Copeland raise campaign cash for him, and defending him against the Senate investigation. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist who calls himself a "Bapti-costal," positioned himself as a bridge between two sometimes conflicting forces within religious conservatism as Copeland blamed Grassley (a Baptist) for scapegoating Pentecostals over religious doctrine, not tax policy.
The Grassley investigation isn't over, but the Senate Finance Committee probably has other pressing matters to attend to before it goes toe to toe with Kenneth Copeland.
A look back at the most important developments in the religious right over the past year.
Sarah Posner November 26, 2008 web only
1. In The Beginning ...
The FundamentaList launched in September 2007 with a question that would recur throughout the presidential campaign: Out of the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, whom would James Dobson endorse?
Dobson had just been reassured by the Internal Revenue Service that his personal endorsement of candidates did not jeopardize Focus on the Family's tax-exempt status. Throughout the GOP primary, the press hung on every possible signal emanating from Colorado Springs, convinced that the eventual nominee's emergence would hinge on Dobson's blessing. As it turned out, Dobson withheld judgment, finally endorsing Mike Huckabee when it was too late to make a difference. Some, including Huckabee himself, blamed Dobson and his allies in the religious right for failing to give Huckabee a boost when he needed it most to win the nomination.
Although Dobson remains the most recognizable name in the religious-right leadership, many other figures, less well known outside the movement, and a "Huck's Army" at the grass roots drove Huckabee's candidacy in 2008 and could drive religious-right support for another run in 2012. The fixation on Dobson's endorsement was a creation of the press, not real voters. Many grass-roots activists told me that his endorsement would be meaningful but not essential for their own decision. But Dobson wasn't the only religious-right figure withholding approval of a candidate, and because of the numerous fractures in the GOP base, including a serious split over Mitt Romney's and Mike Huckabee's conservative credentials, John McCain -- whose campaign looked like it had imploded in September of 2007 -- rose to the top of the pack.
As a result of his dithering, though, Dobson sabotaged his own relevance. Religious-right activists rallied around McCain before Dobson endorsed him, and propped up Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy before Dobson offered his seal of approval. In his new book laying out a blueprint for the future of the conservative movement that includes a crucial place for religious conservatism, Huckabee doesn't even mention Dobson's name.
2. The Emergence of Huckabee.
Although Huckabee lost the GOP primary, his run earned him the support of many prominent evangelicals, and many observers saw him as a possible running mate for McCain, or a future leader of a reconstituted religious right.
While Huckabee was passed over as McCain's running mate (in retrospect, perhaps an ill-conceived decision by McCain), he took numerous steps to position himself as a possible movement leader and/or presidential candidate for 2012 or 2016. He formed a political action committee, HuckPAC, in April, to fundraise for fellow Republicans, and he campaigned for McCain and congressional candidates. He scored a weekly television show on Fox News, later signed a deal for a radio show on ABC Radio Networks that will air next year, and published his post-election tell-all/roadmap for his political future, Do the Right Thing.
In the book, Huckabee lashes out against the "Faux-Cons" who opposed his candidacy and the writers at National Review, who found his worship of conservative economic orthodoxy lacking. He claims his grass-roots conservatives are the future of the movement and that "the uprising among non-Beltway conservatives is real."
To harness all that energy, he launched his Vertical Politics Institute, which is "dedicated to finding solutions to the many challenges our nation faces today," through the mobilization and involvement of the grass roots. It's not clear how, exactly, he's going to deploy his new populist foot soldiers, or how big his army is, but he is giving a big fat poke in the eye to the religious-right establishment and conservative elites.
3. The Pastor Problems.
One of the biggest stories about the intersection of the religious right and McCain's campaign was his endorsement by televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley, and his later rejection of them.
Longtime readers of the Prospect and The FundamentaList knew all about Parsley and Hagee before they were thrust into the campaign spotlight for their endorsements of McCain. Both the Prospect and God's Profits featured examinations of the men's careers, including the preaching of the highly controversial prosperity gospel, secret fundraising and finances, faith-healings, self-enrichment, lawsuits, authoritarianism, secrecy, calls for war and Armageddon, and, of course, hobnobbing with the Republican power elite. McCain's quest for their endorsement was straight out of the Republican playbook -- but the fact that Parsley had essentially campaigned for Bush in 2004 and Hagee had written a book endorsing Bush in 2000 was largely ignored amid the fascination with Hagee's description of the Catholic Church as a "great whore" and Parsley's claim that "Islam is a false religion."
In the YouTube age, though, clips from sermons rule the day, and McCain ultimately rejected Hagee because of one in which he lauded the Holocaust as part of God's plan, and Parsley for another showing him saying that destroying Islam was part of God's plan for America. The whole episode did more damage to McCain's career than Parsley's or Hagee's; as they soldiered on in their battle against Satan, McCain was denounced by the religious right for toying with their feelings and by the rest of the world for pandering to such people in the first place.
4. The Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin.
During her honeymoon with the Republican Party, Palin looked like she -- not Dobson -- would save McCain with the base.
Her conservative credentials were sealed by her decision to continue with a pregnancy when she knew the baby would have Down syndrome, and when she was picked as McCain's VP, Palin became the overnight darling of the religious-right base, which didn't even flinch at the mounting evidence of her utter lack of preparation or qualifications for high office. The religious right's greatest fascination with Palin remains not her political accomplishments (or lack thereof) but her motherhood, good looks, and her destruction of the mold of the submissive evangelical woman, even as wifely submission is, for many fundamentalists, biblically required.
More than any electoral event since Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential run, Palin's candidacy laid bare the deep divide between the religious right and the rest of America. That divide is, more than ever, an existential dilemma for the Republican Party.
5. Televangelist Investigations.
In November 2007, Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, launched an investigation into the financial practices of six prominent televangelists, questioning whether they had used tax-exempt donor funds for their own enrichment.
The targeted televangelists preach the prosperity gospel, or Word of Faith doctrine (as do Parsley and Hagee), through which the televangelists ask their followers to "sow a seed" (give them money) in order to "reap a harvest" (get a supernatural financial return on their investment). Grassley was interested not in the doctrine but in whether all those seeds were going to mansions, luxury cars, and private jets for the televangelists.
Although McCain got a lot of heat for seeking Parsley's and Hagee's endorsement, Huckabee got very little for appearing on Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's television program, letting Copeland raise campaign cash for him, and defending him against the Senate investigation. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist who calls himself a "Bapti-costal," positioned himself as a bridge between two sometimes conflicting forces within religious conservatism as Copeland blamed Grassley (a Baptist) for scapegoating Pentecostals over religious doctrine, not tax policy.
The Grassley investigation isn't over, but the Senate Finance Committee probably has other pressing matters to attend to before it goes toe to toe with Kenneth Copeland.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
BLACK FRIDAY
Days Before Thanks Giving:
Thanks’s giving is a wonderful and also a important event to prepare on. The preparation must start right before a week if you’re planning to give a heavy dinner. Initial thing what everyone must focus on is planning your dinner menu. Prepare before hand and do a check on all items and actions of yours.
Four Days Before Thanksgiving
If you’ve decided the menu just start preparing your checklist for shopping. If your menu includes fresh items get them the day before thanks giving. If it’s going to involve frozen out food and bakery items just have them done before hand. Make a check list of guest your going to invite and have it ready. Specialize the items for the guest according to their liking. Now list the items according to the menu you’ve prepared. Do shopping before hand to avoid “No Stock”
Three Days Before Thanksgiving
Clean the dining room and fridge. We are going o use them regularly in our dinner to serve the guest. Clean the tables and other items. Fill in other decorative items on your dining desk. Let their some fruits along with preservatives to ease your digestion. Make sure you have enough chairs and space to accommodate the guest of invite. Get some decorative silver ware and other items to decorate the table and seats. Have a well laid washed fresh carpet. Let it be as dynamic red or any other color that suits your home well.
Two Days Before Thanksgiving
Get the dishes and other exclusive plates, glasses especially for your thanks giving function and arrange them as per your liking. It would be better to get the wares on the colors of your table cloth. Get a fresh table cloth, napkins and keep them ready. Prepare sauce if any in your menu and keep them in freezer.
One Day Before Thanksgiving
Get fresh turkeys or defreeze the frozen one. Make gravy to stuff the turkey. Defreeze the pie dough and bake them. Prepare desserts of pumpkin pie and any other as per your taste and guest taste. Get ready with soups of vegetables and meat. Set your table right the day before at night and don’t wait till morning. Have your dinner lightly as it may upset you right on the day of thanksgiving. Start with tradition cooking of corn bread, turkey stuffing, Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes.
Thanksgiving Day
Start cooking turkey and stuff it with the gravy prepared. Make soup and steam them if they were prepared before hand. Prepare coffee and don’t brew them. Just steam them before serving. Make sure you enjoy the day. It is a one-day affair. So don’t get too tired that you don’t enjoy it.
On the Day of Black Friday:
Black Friday is considered to be the biggest shopping day of the year. This momentous and stressful event requires a lot of preplans. It’s where a huge demand for Christmas gifts start. Now let’s look up the steps that we must follow,
Start seeing newspapers and other media for ads that attract you. Look for offers and note them down. Start this several weeks before to get a clear cut idea of what sort of items to be purchased. Scour the sales ads in your newspaper. Also just have a visit at online market for products and their details along with comparison.
Just start preparing a list of people for whom you’re going to gift. Identify their type and interest. Note down the details of the person their type of gift and the products you can afford to. These will reduce your time spent on shopping and also definitely give a planned view of shopping.
As soon as you derive a chart, be sure to sort down the priority to purchase the gifts. Also estimate this against the shop special items. Choose a best shop of your choice and be early to avoid long queues. Most shopping will start by 5.00 in the morning so better be early to bed the before day and be quick in the morning.
Get ready in a simpler fashion but fast though.
Be sure that you take a light dinner the before day to avoid late awake
Place orders online to avoid misinterpretations and time waste.
If you better pack your lunch and have it small.
Don’t forget to take fresh juices as you move long to avoid getting dehydrated
After all just be cool and enjoy your shopping.
Benefits of Black Friday:
· Sales of the stores go high.
· Acquaintance develops.
· Consumer and market boosts
Problems to be avoided on Black Friday:
The advertised items aren’t available.
Crowd unorganized.
Lot of disputes at the shop premises demanding police action.
No directions for the crowd to know the items location.
No clear definitions from the shop personnel due to the dumped in crowd rushing out for same product.
Lot of frustration and tiredness rather than enjoyment on the shopping mall.
Thanks’s giving is a wonderful and also a important event to prepare on. The preparation must start right before a week if you’re planning to give a heavy dinner. Initial thing what everyone must focus on is planning your dinner menu. Prepare before hand and do a check on all items and actions of yours.
Four Days Before Thanksgiving
If you’ve decided the menu just start preparing your checklist for shopping. If your menu includes fresh items get them the day before thanks giving. If it’s going to involve frozen out food and bakery items just have them done before hand. Make a check list of guest your going to invite and have it ready. Specialize the items for the guest according to their liking. Now list the items according to the menu you’ve prepared. Do shopping before hand to avoid “No Stock”
Three Days Before Thanksgiving
Clean the dining room and fridge. We are going o use them regularly in our dinner to serve the guest. Clean the tables and other items. Fill in other decorative items on your dining desk. Let their some fruits along with preservatives to ease your digestion. Make sure you have enough chairs and space to accommodate the guest of invite. Get some decorative silver ware and other items to decorate the table and seats. Have a well laid washed fresh carpet. Let it be as dynamic red or any other color that suits your home well.
Two Days Before Thanksgiving
Get the dishes and other exclusive plates, glasses especially for your thanks giving function and arrange them as per your liking. It would be better to get the wares on the colors of your table cloth. Get a fresh table cloth, napkins and keep them ready. Prepare sauce if any in your menu and keep them in freezer.
One Day Before Thanksgiving
Get fresh turkeys or defreeze the frozen one. Make gravy to stuff the turkey. Defreeze the pie dough and bake them. Prepare desserts of pumpkin pie and any other as per your taste and guest taste. Get ready with soups of vegetables and meat. Set your table right the day before at night and don’t wait till morning. Have your dinner lightly as it may upset you right on the day of thanksgiving. Start with tradition cooking of corn bread, turkey stuffing, Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes.
Thanksgiving Day
Start cooking turkey and stuff it with the gravy prepared. Make soup and steam them if they were prepared before hand. Prepare coffee and don’t brew them. Just steam them before serving. Make sure you enjoy the day. It is a one-day affair. So don’t get too tired that you don’t enjoy it.
On the Day of Black Friday:
Black Friday is considered to be the biggest shopping day of the year. This momentous and stressful event requires a lot of preplans. It’s where a huge demand for Christmas gifts start. Now let’s look up the steps that we must follow,
Start seeing newspapers and other media for ads that attract you. Look for offers and note them down. Start this several weeks before to get a clear cut idea of what sort of items to be purchased. Scour the sales ads in your newspaper. Also just have a visit at online market for products and their details along with comparison.
Just start preparing a list of people for whom you’re going to gift. Identify their type and interest. Note down the details of the person their type of gift and the products you can afford to. These will reduce your time spent on shopping and also definitely give a planned view of shopping.
As soon as you derive a chart, be sure to sort down the priority to purchase the gifts. Also estimate this against the shop special items. Choose a best shop of your choice and be early to avoid long queues. Most shopping will start by 5.00 in the morning so better be early to bed the before day and be quick in the morning.
Get ready in a simpler fashion but fast though.
Be sure that you take a light dinner the before day to avoid late awake
Place orders online to avoid misinterpretations and time waste.
If you better pack your lunch and have it small.
Don’t forget to take fresh juices as you move long to avoid getting dehydrated
After all just be cool and enjoy your shopping.
Benefits of Black Friday:
· Sales of the stores go high.
· Acquaintance develops.
· Consumer and market boosts
Problems to be avoided on Black Friday:
The advertised items aren’t available.
Crowd unorganized.
Lot of disputes at the shop premises demanding police action.
No directions for the crowd to know the items location.
No clear definitions from the shop personnel due to the dumped in crowd rushing out for same product.
Lot of frustration and tiredness rather than enjoyment on the shopping mall.
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