Many of my blog posts require hundreds of words and many links and images to convey my complicated feelings and experiences in this life.
This isn’t one of them.
In the year of our Lord 1620, we, a congregation of faithful souls, departed from England aboard the good ship Mayflower, seeking a land where we might worship our God without the yoke of persecution. We landed upon the shores of Plymouth in the New World late in that same year, amidst the harshness of winter’s onset. Many were the trials we faced, and sore were our numbers lessened by illness and the biting cold.
Come the next year, 1621, having survived that grievous winter and planted our seeds in this fertile, yet foreign soil, we saw fit to set aside a day of thanksgiving. This was not merely for the harvest, bounteous as it was, but also for the preservation of our lives and the newfound peace with the peoples of this land, the Wampanoag tribe. Our gracious God had seen fit to bring us into the acquaintance of Squanto, a native of these parts, who kindly instructed us in the way of cultivating corn, fishing in these rivers, and surviving in a land so unlike our own.
Our feast of thanksgiving was thus appointed in November, after our crops had been gathered. We prepared dishes of fowl and deer, and our tables were graced with the fruits of our harvest—corn, squashes, and the like. To our celebration, we invited the Wampanoag, including their great sachem Massasoit. For three days, we did feast and make merry with our Indian brethren, giving thanks to the Almighty for His manifold blessings.
It is in this spirit, that we mark each year hence as a time of thanksgiving to the Lord, a remembrance of our deliverance to this new Eden and the friendships fostered here, amidst trials and tribulations. Thus, Thanksgiving hath been observed, a testament to our perseverance and the Providence that hath guided and sustained us.
