The people we know as the Pilgrims have become so surrounded with legends that we tend to
forget that they were real people. Against great odds, they courageously made the famous
1620 voyage and founded the first New England colony, but they were still ordinary English
men and women, not super heroes. If we really want to understand them, we must try to look
behind the legends and see them as they saw themselves.
They were English people who sought to escape the religious controversies and economic
problems of their time by emigrating to America. Many of the Pilgrims were members of a
Puritan sect known as Separatists. They believed that membership in the Church of England
violated the biblical precepts for true Christians, and that they had to break away and form
independent congregations which were truer to divine requirements. At a time when Church
and State were one, such an act was treasonous and the Separatists had to flee their mother
country. Other Pilgrims remained loyal to the national Church but came because of economic
opportunity and a sympathy with Puritanism as well. They all shared a fervent and pervasive
Protestant faith that touched all areas in their life.
As English people, the Pilgrims also shared a vital secular culture, both learned and traditional.
They lived in a time which accepted fairies and witches, herbal remedies and astrological
virtues, seasonal festivals and folklore as real parts of their lives. They looked at the world they
lived in not as we do today, through the eyes of Einstein and Freud, but through the folklore of
the countryside and academic traditions that stretched back to antiquity. They were both the
thorough Protestants of the recent Reformation and the inheritors of the Medieval world picture
that infused the imaginations of Shakespeare and Jonson.
They were not people just like ourselves dressed in funny clothes, or a primitive folk deprived
of our technology, but a vital and courageous people who embodied the best elements of their
exciting society. They brought their own culture to the New World and attempted to establish a
citadel of English society on the edge of the alien continent. They were not pioneers self-
consciously blazing a trail through the trackless wilderness to the future. They were English men
and women doing their best to continue the lives they knew back home in spite of the unfamiliar
surroundings.
They brought with them familiar customs, among which were an autumn secular harvest
celebration and a Puritan religious Thanksgiving holy day. As we shall see, these two events
were totally separate and independent in their minds. It is we, today, who have blurred the
differences and merged the two events into one. A secular celebration such as a harvest was an
annual event which would of course include the giving of religious thanks to God;
acknowledgement of God’s Providence was part of most days of their lives. A true Day of
Thanksgiving was a completely separate observance.
When the Puritans rejected the old Medieval ecclesiastical calendar of Christmas, Easter and
Saint’s days, they submitted three allowable holy days: The Sabbath, the Day of Humiliation
and Fasting, and the Day of Thanksgiving and Praise. The latter two were never held on a
regular basis but only in direct response to God’s Providence. When things went well, signaling
God’s pleasure with the community, then it was proper to declare a Day of Thanksgiving in His
praise. But when God’s displeasure was evident and events were unfortunate, it was an
indication that the community should repent and declare a Day of Fasting and Humiliation. Each
of these days were held on weekdays and meant an extra day of church services and devotion
in addition to the Sabbath. The Day of Thanksgiving was often concluded with a feast, while
the fast days saw voluntary privation.
The harvest celebration of autumn, 1621, was quite plainly neither a fast day nor a thanksgiving
day in the eyes of the Pilgrims. Rather it was a secular celebration which included games,
recreations, three days of feasting and Indian guests. It would have been unthinkable to have
these things as part of a religious Thanksgiving. The actual first declared Thanksgiving occurred
in 1623, after a providential rain shower saved the colony’s crops.
It was only in the later 19th century, when looking back for a precedent for the modern, more
secular Thanksgiving of family feasts and football games which had evolved after the decline of
Puritanism, that people discovered this first harvest celebration and dubbed it the "First
Thanksgiving." They were not interested in what that famous festival meant to the Pilgrims; they
were concerned with what it could mean to Victorians like themselves.
Ever since, the Pilgrims have been the symbolic originators of our familiar November holiday.
Legends about the feast have turned it into a mythic event worthy of our emulation. It is a good
story, and an important part of our cultural tradition. It helps us remember those hardy English
men and women who braved dangers far greater than we have to face today to follow their
own consciences and give glory to God. But if we really want to understand them, we must go
beyond the legend, important as it is, and try to see the real Pilgrims and the celebration they
enjoyed so many years ago.
1. Tales of Rabbi Nachman Monday,...
