Thanksgiving

by Tom Shafer

November 22, 2020

So, it recently dawned on – really late-morninged – me that I have never written a full piece about Thanksgiving, which is truly unforgiveable.  Yes, I touched on it briefly in my “Spooky Hallowe’en!!” essay (found under the For Your Consideration tab), but that is not nearly enough.

And, I must confess, I’m doing this under some duress.  On Friday afternoon last, I cut off the tip of my left index finger with a pair of pruning shears (sharpened to perfection, of course, by yours truly).  Fortunately, it was a clean cut, just above the bone, so any risk of infection was minimalized (though I am taking an antibiotic series for seven days and had my tetanus vaccination updated while in the ER).  I see my hand surgeon (yes, my, indicating that I have one – who has performed three previous surgeries and injected my failing digits with cortisone numerous times) this coming Tuesday to consult with him about what happens next.  I have no idea what to expect because online doctoring sites present a mixed bag about treatment.

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In the meanwhile, I am stuck with a rather large piece of gauze wrapped with stretchy tape that makes word processing just slightly more challenging than usual.  Because this isn’t my first rodeo with damaged fingers and hands, I will carry on – though I just did spell the word “fingers” d-i-n-f-w-e-s.

Much has already been written about the Pilgrims, who unknowingly are credited with what we call Thanksgiving.  Perhaps the best, because of its direct tie to actual events, is Of Plymouth Plantation, written by Pilgrim leader William Bradford, who was elected then re-elected governor thirty more times.  His manuscript was not written for direct public consumption, but instead was intended to be a journal of sorts, chronicling twenty-seven years of Pilgrim life from the crossing to dealing with the Natives to establishing a form of self-government not unlike ours today. Three other books I have read and recommend are Rebecca Fraser’s The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America (which traces the Edward Winslow family); Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (which retells a fifty-six year history of the Plymouth settlement); and Edward Winslow’s Good News from New England (actually published in 1624 which chronicles the second and third years of the colony – and promotes it to inform investors and other potential separatists).

So here’s where we need a quick history lesson.  The seventeenth-century Pilgrims were Separatist Puritans who fled persecution in England (and eventually Holland) for a new start (aboard the Mayflower in 1620) in the New World.  They landed near present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a miserable voyage, and found the American wilderness challenging and hostile.  In fact, half of the original one hundred settlers did not live to see the first spring.  So, after first contact with and assistance from the Wampanoag tribe (specifically sachem Massasoit, Squanto, and Samoset), the Pilgrims learned how to survive – and ultimately thrive – in New England.

Most of what we know about the first Thanksgiving comes from a letter written by Edward Winslow in December of 1621.  The three-day harvest celebration likely took place in late September or early October, and Native attendance may well have been a stroke of serendipity.  Approximately fifty colonists (including only four adult women) and ninety Natives enjoyed food, games, and some rudimentary military exercises, and it is believed that the legacy of the event welcomed many years of goodwill between and among the attendees. 

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As for the food, the lazy writer in me will reveal the menu for that day with some good old-fashioned plagiarism – from my own “Spooky Hallowe’en!!” writing:  

At Thanksgiving (for a pre-break school party), my American Literature students would revisit William Bradford and the Puritans (from an earlier unit) and create a period meal.  Far from our plump turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies, that first thanksgiving consisted of venison, spit-roasted carrier pigeon, shellfish (lobster and clams), roasted maize, turnips, squashes, and some sort of bread – though we are not sure how it would have been made (no wheat nor leavening agent).  So, in my classroom, our Thanksgiving meal consisted of these authentic foods – and, of course, a few of our more traditional items as well (I’m not a complete ogre!).  Some years we were blessed with roasted deer or duck (from one of my hunters), clams or shrimp, stewed summer squash, and unleavened cornbread – along with turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie.  At least we were learning something – like that the Puritans must have had some pretty interesting taste buds (though to be honest, I would feel right at home with them – especially the beer that would have been washing the meal down!).

Now, we don’t know if this celebration was ever repeated with the Pilgrims (if so, it was never noted nor written about), but we do know that Abraham Lincoln decreed in 1863 that the last Thursday in November be set aside as a national day of thanksgiving – though Presidents Washington, Adams, and Madison had offered similar days of thanksgiving.  Whether it was the Civil War, or even the lobbying of Sarah “Mother of Thanksgiving” Hale (of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” fame), Lincoln hoped that this day would help “heal the wounds of the nation.”  Unfortunately, the War continued to rage and ravage for another year and a half, but the legacy of the holiday was set. 

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, though as time has gone by, my love for it has transformed.  From childhood into early adulthood, this was the one time of the year that my entire family gathered for celebration.  Perhaps because we resided in the largest house, my relations from small towns on the Ohio River (both in Kentucky and Ohio) made the two to three hour pilgrimage to Beavercreek, Ohio, for food, fellowship, and football – and sometimes basketball.  In my youth, the two o’clock meal would be followed by backyard football games with the cousins, or if warm enough, some basketball at the outdoors hoops next to Beavercreek High School.  The adults would watch – and fall asleep during – the annual professional football games that always featured (and still do) the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys.  Sometimes the female cousins and aunts, along with my mother and sister, would visit our local K-Mart for some early Christmas shopping, or they too might succumb to slumber and enjoy naps in beds and on couches all over the house.  By five or six in the evening, the visitors would be back in their vehicles, caravanning home to their river communities.

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As I got older, these gatherings, which at times had numbered as many as twenty to twenty-five, grew smaller.  Cousins were pulled to other families, and of course, death intervened, taking grandparents, uncles, and aunts.  Now I was watching the football games with my dad, uncle, and a couple of cousins while the women folk, including my wife, sat in the kitchen and chatted and reminisced.  After my father acquired cancer, we were able to host one more smallish Thanksgiving meal, but then the annual tradition unceremoniously came to an end.

For a couple of years, we would celebrate with direct family only, but of course it wasn’t quite the same.  At my father’s passing in October of 2013, my mother was displaying signs of Alzheimer’s and the last true family gathering occurred that year when I took my mom to her niece’s home in Maysville, Kentucky.  We had an enjoyable time, but I recognized then that true family Thanksgivings were coming to an end.  For the next two years, we celebrated with a small group in my new home, my mother, father-in-law, and special needs sister in attendance, but that second year I knew would likely be the last.  These were quiet affairs because of mom’s memory and my father-in-law’s hearing disability, but we tried to carry on as best we could.

For the last three years, we celebrated Thanksgiving in nursing homes with both of our parents until my mom passed away in February of 2018 and father-in-law Richard passed in December of 2019.  Though we tried not to focus on their individual medical issues at the time, a sadness crept into those celebrations nonetheless.  So, my favorite holiday, though still a day of thanksgiving, was – and is – now touched with the losses of parents and other dear relatives.  I know this happens with all families, but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier.  Of course, it also happened with those early Pilgrims, who lost half of their “family” that first winter in America.

Strangely, it seems appropriate, for us anyway, that this will be a COVID Thanksgiving.  I’m not sure if we were truly ready to face the holiday, now with all matriarchs and patriarchs having passed on.  Thanksgiving is that one true family holiday, one not affiliated with religion or remembrance or gift giving.  Perhaps next year we will be able to enjoy a proper Thanksgiving with extended family, one that hearkens back to those celebrations of my youth.  That would be nice.  And in case you were wondering, in spite of it all, I still love and feel thankful for the hope and promise of Thanksgiving.  We will certainly need all of that this year.