The First Thanksgiving

Caleb and I made cranberry sauce from real cranberries this afternoon. As in, I turned the burner on and he watched the berries pop.   It was as difficult as opening at least 2 cans of cranberry sauce. Crazy easy.

PEP ended last Friday with our annual Thanksgiving feast.  I brought a whole turkey (cut up), each family has to sign up for an item and bring enough for 25 or so.  I figure that bringing a turkey is the easiest and most economical way to go!  It was nice to have the whole spread and not have to make it all.  For us, we'll have turkey with several small sides - as is our custom when we stay in Florida for Thanksgiving, which has been more and more often.

In our last My America class we did a quick Thanksgiving lesson and made these pumpkins...this one (Caleb's) got smashed on the way home:

Before they were smashed they were rounder and more pumpkinish and I was amazed at how much the kids liked them.  Each kid had 10 strips of cardstock.  Five of them were blank to write things they were thankful for - the idea was to alternate the written ones with the printed ones.  You fastened the top and bottom with a brad and fanned out the strips and they became a ball.  The boys in the class - even the very wiggly ones - thought this was the best craft all semester.  Hooray!

While preparing for the My America lesson, I read up on the First Thanksgiving, interesting stuff... I heard a lady on the radio today berating Thanksgiving in general as a celebration of European conquest.  I find talk like that hurtful - because it feels like we are being blamed for understanding what the original settlers/pilgrims could not fully grasp.  I don't understand how it helps - 400 years later - to vilify the pilgrims and put the Indians on a pedestal in their place.  In every people there are good caring people and bad selfish ones.  And even good caring people can unknowingly and unintentionally hurt others.  You can appreciate your ancestors without thinking they were perfect.

But the thing is, the Thanksgiving that we celebrate today doesn't actually date back to the pilgrims.  It only goes back to the Civil War - and sometimes you hear people mention that in passing.  Last week I read the Thanksgiving proclamation written by Lincoln in 1863.


1863 - the middle of the Civil War!  A time for establishing a tradition of giving thanks as a nation?  In the proclamation Lincoln wrote about how theirs was a time of contradiction - great losses of life and time and treasure in battle, but great gains in farming, industry, and even population.  He wrote:

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

 So Thanksgiving doesn't go back to some palely understood 3 day feast between European aggressors and Native peoples, it goes back to a time when no one knew what the future held, when there was much suffering, but it was still possible, still necessary to count our blessings.  And that I think is a timeless and holy thing...that no one should be ashamed of.