The Great American Thanksgiving Myths

[Warph]

The Great American Thanksgiving Myths
 
     
"A myth! What do you mean America's Thanksgiving holiday is based on a myth!"
     
"The Christian Science Monitor published a detailed report on it.  They found that the holiday has two distinct histories – one real, the other made up.  We celebrate the made-up version."
     
"Made up!"
     
"Yep. Everything historians know about the first Thanksgiving is based on the accounts of two colonists: Governor William Bradford and a fellow named Edward Winslow."
     
"Go on."
     
"In 1621, Winslow wrote a letter to a friend.  He said that after a plentiful harvest, the 52 remaining colonists decided to feast.  The governor sent out four men to hunt for fowl. Ninety Native Americans, the Wampanoags, also joined in; they contributed five deer.  The colonists and Wampanoags feasted for three days."
     
"They ate deer meat on Thanksgiving?"
     
"In 1641, Governor Bradford wrote a book about the history of the Plymouth settlement.  In it, he also described the first Thanksgiving. But the British stole his book during the Revolutionary War.  It didn't turn up until the late1800's – after America's Thanksgiving tradition was already formed."
     
"The lousy Brits. So what do we know about the first Thanksgiving?"
     
"Well, it was nothing like it has been presented.  For starters, the pilgrims didn't eat turkey. The 'fowl' Winslow described in his letter were probably geese or duck."
     
"Thanksgiving duck?"
     
"Yeah, and there was no cranberry sauce.  The colonists didn't begin boiling berries with sugar until 1671."
     
"What are you going to tell me next?  That there weren't any mashed potatoes or stuffing or pies for dessert!" 
     
Funny you mention that.  White and sweet potatoes weren't yet available to the colonists. There wasn't bread yet, either – they had no ovens.  And though pumpkins were available, it's doubtful they had the butter and wheat flour they needed to make pie crust."
     
"Oh, brother. Then what did they eat?"
   
"They ate what was available then.  In addition to the fowl, their meal probably included grapes, plums, flint corn and sea food – you know, lobster, crab and mussels."   

"Lobster, crab and mussels!  Who the heck catered the first Thanksgiving, Long John Silvers!  If what you say is true, why does our Thanksgiving celebration differ so much from the first one?"
     
"The reason dates back to the 19th century.  Back then there was no official Thanksgiving holiday and if people celebrated it, they did so in a private and solemn manner.  A woman named Sarah Josepha Hale changed that."
     
"Who was she?"
     
"Hale was editor of a popular lady's magazine.  She wrote editorials promoting an official Thanksgiving holiday.  In 1858, she petitioned the president to declare it a national holiday. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln did just that."
     
"But how did we get our facts so wrong about the first Thanksgiving?"
     
"Well, Hale also published numerous recipes for turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce pumpkin pie, etc.  She idealized the first Thanksgiving and the foods and traditions she promoted are the very same ones we now associate with our Thanksgiving feast."
     
"And most of what we do on Thanksgiving – and much of what we eat – has nothing to do with what really happened during the first Thanksgiving, when the colonists supposedly 'broke bread' with the Native Americans?"
     
"Yes, that is correct.  The relationship between Native Americans and the colonists was complex and not always pleasant.  In fact, in the coming decades after more colonists arrived and pushed the Native Americans westward, the two factions would soon find themselves in a bloody war." 
     
"Boy, you sure know how to cheer a fellow up in time for the holidays."
     
"But we should be cheerful.  Regardless of how our Thanksgiving tradition was formed – regardless of what is fact and what is myth -- we have an incredible abundance of blessings to be thankful for.  That's what the day is really about – celebrating our prosperity, our freedoms, and so the many young men and women who are serving the rest of us to protect our freedoms."
     
"Now that's something to be thankful for."
     
"Yes it is. Happy Thanksgiving."


And then we have these Myths explained on Thanksgiving:


 
MYTH # 1
The Pilgrims Held the First Thanksgiving
To see what the first Thanksgiving was like you have to go to: Texas. Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1598 -- twenty-three years before the Pilgrims' festival. For several years they have staged a reenactment of the event that culminated in the Thanksgiving celebration: the arrival of Spanish explorer Juan de Onate on the banks of the Rio Grande. De Onate is said to have held a big Thanksgiving festival after leading hundreds of settlers on a grueling 350-mile long trek across the Mexican desert.
Then again, you may want to go to Virginia.. At the Berkeley Plantation on the James River they claim the first Thanksgiving in America was held there on December 4th, 1619....two years before the Pilgrims' festival....and every year since 1958 they have reenacted the event. In their view it's not the Mayflower we should remember, it's the Margaret, the little ship which brought 38 English settlers to the plantation in 1619. The story is that the settlers had been ordered by the London company that sponsored them to commemorate the ship's arrival with an annual day of Thanksgiving. Hardly anybody outside Virginia has ever heard of this Thanksgiving, but in 1963 President Kennedy officially recognized the plantation's claim.
 
MYTH # 2
Thanksgiving Was About Family
If by Thanksgiving, you have in mind the Pilgrim festival, forget about it being a family holiday. Put away your Norman Rockwell paintings. Turn off Bing Crosby. Thanksgiving was a multicultural community event. If it had been about family, the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them.
 
MYTH # 3
Thanksgiving Was About Religion
No it wasn't. Paraphrasing the answer provided above, if Thanksgiving had been about religion, the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them. Besides, the Pilgrims would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event. Indeed, what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival. Actual "Thanksgivings" were religious affairs; everybody spent the day praying. Incidentally, these Pilgrim Thanksgivings occurred at different times of the year, not just in November.
 
MYTH # 4
The Pilgrims Ate Turkey
What did the Pilgrims eat at their Thanksgiving festival? They didn't have corn on the cob, apples, pears, potatoes or even cranberries. No one knows if they had turkey, although they were used to eating turkey. The only food we know they had for sure was deer. 11(And they didn't eat with a fork; they didn't have forks back then.)
So how did we get the idea that you have turkey and cranberry and such on Thanksgiving? It was because the Victorians prepared Thanksgiving that way. And they're the ones who made Thanksgiving a national holiday, beginning in 1863, when Abe Lincoln issued his presidential Thanksgiving proclamations...two of them: one to celebrate Thanksgiving in August, a second one in November. Before Lincoln Americans outside New England did not usually celebrate the holiday. (The Pilgrims, incidentally, didn't become part of the holiday until late in the nineteenth century. Until then, Thanksgiving was simply a day of thanks, not a day to remember the Pilgrims.)
 
MYTH # 5
The Pilgrims Landed on Plymouth Rock
According to historian George Willison, who devoted his life to the subject, the story about the rock is all malarkey, a public relations stunt pulled off by townsfolk to attract attention. What Willison found out is that the Plymouth Rock legend rests entirely on the dubious testimony of Thomas Faunce, a ninety-five year old man, who told the story more than a century after the Mayflower landed. Unfortunately, not too many people ever heard how we came by the story of Plymouth Rock. Willison's book came out at the end of World War II and Americans had more on their minds than Pilgrims then. So we've all just gone merrily along repeating the same old story as if it's true when it's not. And anyway, the Pilgrims didn't land in Plymouth first. They first made landfall at Provincetown. Of course, the people of Plymouth stick by hoary tradition. Tour guides insist that Plymouth Rock is THE rock.
 
MYTH # 6
Pilgrims Lived in Log Cabins
No Pilgrim ever lived in a log cabin. The log cabin did not appear in America until late in the seventeenth century, when it was introduced by Germans and Swedes. The very term "log cabin" cannot be found in print until the 1770s. Log cabins were virtually unknown in England at the time the Pilgrims arrived in America. So what kind of dwellings did the Pilgrims inhabit? As you can see if you visit Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims lived in wood clapboard houses made from sawed lumber.
 
MYTH # 7
Pilgrims Dressed in Black
Not only did they not dress in black, they did not wear those funny buckles, weird shoes, or black steeple hats. So how did we get the idea of the buckles? Plimoth Plantation historian James W. Baker explains that in the nineteenth century, when the popular image of the Pilgrims was formed, buckles served as a kind of emblem of quaintness. That's the reason illustrators gave Santa buckles. Even the blunderbuss, with which Pilgrims are identified, was a symbol of quaintness. The blunderbuss was mainly used to control crowds. It wasn't a hunting rifle. But it looks out of date and fits the Pilgrim stereotype.
 
MYTH # 8
Pilgrims, Puritans -- Same Thing
Though even presidents get this wrong -- Ronald Reagan once referred to Puritan John Winthrop as a Pilgrim -- Pilgrims and Puritans were two different groups. The Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and lived in Plymouth. The Puritans, arriving a decade later, settled in Boston. The Pilgrims welcomed heterogeneousness. Some (so-called "strangers") came to America in search of riches, others (so-called "saints") came for religious reasons. The Puritans, in contrast, came over to America strictly in search of religious freedom. Or, to be technically correct, they came over in order to be able to practice their religion freely. They did not welcome dissent. That we confuse Pilgrims and Puritans would have horrified both. Puritans considered the Pilgrims incurable utopians. While both shared the belief that the Church of England had become corrupt, only the Pilgrims believed it was beyond redemption. They therefore chose the path of Separatism. Puritans held out the hope the church would reform.
 
MYTH # 9
Puritans Hated Sex
Actually, they welcomed sex as a God-given responsibility. When one member of the First Church of Boston refused to have conjugal relations with his wife two years running, he was expelled. Cotton Mather, the celebrated Puritan minister, condemned a married couple who had abstained from sex in order to achieve a higher spirituality. They were the victims, he wrote, of a "blind zeal."
 
MYTH # 10
Puritans Hated Fun
H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy!" Actually, the Puritans welcomed laughter and dressed in bright colors (or, to be precise, the middle and upper classes dressed in bright colors; members of the lower classes were not permitted to indulge themselves -- they dressed in dark clothes). As Carl Degler long ago observed, "The Sabbatarian, antiliquor, and antisex attitudes usually attributed to the Puritans are a nineteenth-century addition to the much more moderate and wholesome view of life's evils held by the early settlers of New England."