Thanksgiving
22 November 2007 - 13 כסלו 5768 by Huw
I’ll not be doing anything this year: I work both Wednesday night and Thursday night. I will, however, be doing pies this weekend… just to have some pies (a quintessential Thanksgiving food, if you ask me). Thursday I’ll be making Mincemeat. Later I’ll indulge in Pecan. Pumpkin and also a new one: Apple-Cranberry-Pecan. All of these pies will be baked and shared with my coworkers.
At Thanksgiving Mass (Pardon the Tautology) Fr B reminded us that, as Anglicans, the Puritans were not our kind of people. They were, in fact, fleeing us: our prayerbook, our bishops, saints, etc.
But it really is only our mythology that involves the Puritans - the holiday, per se, has nothing to do with them. It’s been appointed and proclaimed over and over by sitting Presidents since Washington. We owe our current date (4th Thursday of November) to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It’s strange when you think about it: given the reputation the Puritans have (Pious nags, really: the ne plus ultra of Church Ladies) why do we pick them for a national foundation myth? The first harvest thanksgiving was in Virginia colony, anyway - in a town called Berkeley (which is sure to make many conservative sorts twitch). I think the reason may well be a Yankee bias, to be honest, but I bet no one on the right wants to commemorate anything called “Berkeley”.
Doesn’t it seems odd to pick, as our Eucharistic forefathers, some who would have denied the need, efficacy or spiritual power of the Eucharist? Doesn’t it seem odd to pick as the spiritual parents of our melting pot some who were more exclusionary than most? Isn’t it ironic that we pick, as the founders of our national feast, ones who would have condemned and excommunicated as heathens, most - even the most pious - of us today?
Surely all of that must seem even more stranger now, for this is the most American of all the Holidays and everyone joins in: regardless of religion, regardless of faith or lack of, almost everyone in the USA wants to be somewhere today with someone or many someones all eating together and enjoying a superfluity of comestible traditions.
As we gather around a table giving thanks to anyone who will listen - even if we only give thanks to the hands that roasted a tofurkey…
Have a happy feast!
Wait, we\’re making a tofurkey! There are 3 of us, out of about 20, who don\’t eat meat.
But that\’s not why I really commented. I was wondering where the Native Americans come in to your take on Thanksgiving?
Either way, make the best of work, and enjoy your pies!
I have no opinion on it… although as I cited on my other blog, I’m sure some of my Creek Indian family does!
Hmm,
Some of what you cited as the Puritan ethos was actually foisted on us by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was not a fan of the Puritans. His Scarlet Letter was, uhm, not quite accurate.
For instance, as to what they wore, see here published in 1903 for a description, not only of Puritan dress, but also of colonial dress in the various colonies. Hmm, it does not match Hawthorn or modern Puritan mythology.
Another book you ought to look at is “Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England.” Interestingly enough, a review of this book says the following:
“For over four centuries ‘puritan’ has been a synonym for ‘dour,’ ‘joyless,’ and ‘repressed.’ In the 1930s however, historians began to reappraise the accuracy of this grim portrait. Bruce C. Daniels continues that reappraisal by examining leisure and recreation in colonial and revolutionary New England. He looks closely not only at what New Englanders did from 1620 to 1790, but also at what they said about play, pleasure, and relaxation, thereby placing their deeds and words in the context of an evolving and complex social structure. Daniels’s descriptions of leisure and recreational activities do justice to both the intellectual richness of the historical material and to its inherent charm. Chapters on reading, music, civic celebrations, dinner parties, dancing, courtship, sex, alcohol, taverns, sports and games are presented in a lively style designed to make this book as entertaining as it is illuminating.”
In that book, Hawthorne’s portraiture of Puritan New England is particularly shot down. But, why does the mythology perversely persist despite secular scholarly studies to the contrary? Because a boogey man is needed to scare us into being “free” lest we fall into the clutches of evil repressive Puritanism.
One set of studies from England even argues that there is no such thing as Puritans, only puritans.
Where the Puritans perfect? Of course not! But they also were no more imperfect than the rest of the colonists, and maybe less. They engaged in the rum-slave triangle, as did all seacoast colonists (excepts the Quakers). Their judicial punishments were every bit as horrid as any English punishment or other colonial punishment, except that there was no debtor’s prison where one could rot until death for an unpaid debt. But their family orientation was better than most other colonists.
So, before you thrash the Puritans (or puritans) read about them!
Sorry, one additional comment on this post.
The reason why the Pilgrim celebration probably became the protoypical one is that the Virginia celebration was inward pointed, while the Pilgrim one included invitations to the Native Americans and was thus outward pointed.
Unfortunately, the good relations of those early years did not last, and by 1676, they were being called Heathens, in the worst sense of the word. Nevertheless, the idyllic nature of that early period presents a picture of what ought to be, even if it was not what came to be.
Interestingly enough, we might then ought to use John Penn’s Quaker colony as an example of what ought to be. The Quakers lived in harmony with the Delewares for over 1/2 century with no wars being fought between them. Maybe we ought to picture a Quaker/Deleware Thanskgiving as a national image.
Thanks for these comments.
Your first one, however, states a question - and I think I failed to be clear in my post:
I think a more interesting question is why, despite the (bad) mythology - common *everywhere* - do we still insist on seeing them as the spiritual fathers of our country? Your comments posit a more interesting view, yes: but one not widely known in the public. So we like to think of them as pious nags: why do we still give them the credit, thus, for founding such a feast?
Do we imagine them as sort of a bette noir that we’re over coming in our hedonism? Do we secretly know the real history? Are they some kind of foil needed to allay our own guilt at consumption? Would seeing them as Early American Party Animals give us a complex?
I go for the foil theory. Both liberal and conservative need them as a mythological foil. The first to argue against a repression that never was as bad as pictured; the second to picture an Edenic innocence that was never as good as pictured.
The more Edenic colony was Penn’s, but the Society of Friends only made an impact with the Underground Railway and war opposition, neither of which is likely to get you to be a symbol in this country. (Except on boxes of oatmeal and cereal.)