By David Christy, News Editor

Hopefully, as you read this column, you have recovered from an overindulgence of turkey and dressing and all the extras we, as a nation, place on the tables on which we down our Thanksgiving meal.

Many of us learned of the first Thanksgiving from plays and skits in grammar school and drawing pictures of Pilgrims and turkeys and Indians. Unfortunately, few of us know what the heck happened prior to, and at, the first Thanksgiving.

The holiday’s saga, which today brings together family and friends to travel to grandma’s house and eat too much, began in the early 1600s

About 1607, a group of religious dissidents felt it was necessary to separate from the Church of England, and moved to Holland. These separatists had been persecuted in England for their religious views and were the primary portion of those who sailed to America on the Mayflower, the Fortune, the Anne and the Little James, ships that brought them to these shores on the two-plus-month voyage from 1620 to 1623. However, these ships also carried non-separatists and separatist sympathizers, alike. Some 44 Pilgrims on that first ship called themselves “Saints,” and the other 66 were called “Strangers” — by the Pilgrims.

Although they later were known as The Pilgrims, that term wasn’t applied to them until the early 1800s.

The Mayflower and later ships were financed by English investors, who agreed to transport and supply this disparate group to the New World, in exchange for their working for these backers seven years.

The first trip took some 65 days, which led to disagreements between the two traveling parties. But they met when land was sighted on Nov. 10, 1620, and worked out the Mayflower Compact, which guaranteed equality and unified the two groups.

Originally, the Pilgrims had to obtain a charter for settlement in the northern part of the Virginia Colony, but when a main beam cracked on the Mayflower following the storm-wracked voyage, they set sight of Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. But it was well outside the original charter area where they had permission to settle.

With the season late, supplies of food and water low, they could go no further and anchored in today’s Provincetown Harbor.

Some passengers questioned the authority of the group’s leaders and argued the charter was not valid for a settlement to be established in New England.

The boat’s passengers then drew up an agreement the group would remain together in a civil body politic, known from our history books as the Mayflower Compact.

They then applied for a new charter, which was granted, but with the stipulation the settlement survive seven years, at which time they could apply for a permanent settlement charter.

Of course, as we well know, the colony survived and thrived, eventually becoming the state of Massachusetts.

The significance of these early settlers in the New World cannot be overstated, since the Mayflower Compact embodied principles of separation of church and state and the rule of just and equal laws that would flourish until they were placed into permanence when America separated itself from the rule of England during the American Revolutionary War.

Thus, the Mayflower Compact can be seen as one of this nation’s most important documents, since it essentially states people could band together to assist in eventually deciding their own fates, instead of “by your leave” to a king or nobility across the seas.

The first Thanksgiving in early autumn of 1621 was not called Thanksgiving as we know it today. The 53 surviving Pilgrims simply celebrated their successful harvest, which was a custom brought down from their English roots.

To the Pilgrims, a day of thanksgiving (small t) was purely religious, and that first day of thanks was not held until 1623, in response to a bountiful rainfall.

The harvest festival and the religious day of thanksgiving evolved into a single event, becoming a custom of celebrating abundance and family, which began to take root and spread across the American colonies — which eventually, through much trial and tribulation, became the United States of America.

Still, the day we now call Thanksgiving was not universally celebrated across America. Not until 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, did Abraham Lincoln declare it an annual, national Thanksgiving Day.

The first Pilgrims could not have envisioned what Thanksgiving has become today. They simply were thankful for having hacked homes out of a wilderness, raised enough crops to keep them alive for the following winter and found a way to make peace with their Indian neighbors.

This group, branded as troublemakers in their native land, literally beat odds stacked against them on these shores, and they wanted to celebrate, pure and simple.

While our Thanksgiving Day celebrations have gone well beyond the realm of pure and simple, it wouldn’t hurt to remember the seed our forefathers planted when they landed on Plymouth Rock, historically speaking.



Christy is news editor at the News & Eagle, and can be reached at davidc@enidnews.com.