I personally love Thanksgiving - if you’ve ever read my blog, Paprika Angel you will see my love of food and travel but also the time and energy I have spent preparing this meal for friends and loved ones and sometimes strangers for years. With minor exception I pull together 10 or more people to feast extravagantly every year, even if my funds are short. I always have found a way because I love to prepare and feed and make offerings at this time of year from a place of love. At one of my in person legal educational events last year, my door prize included a Turkey Day kit and the who won it said. “Oh, I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.” and was offended by my gift. I stopped in my tracks, not to apologize, but for my naivety and surprise - as some still believe and or are wholly ignorant of what Thanksgiving as a National Holiday is about. So we are going to go down a little gobbler day history less here to reclaim any misconceptions of Thanksgiving back into the light. There were no docile aboriginals showing up at some saintly puritan pilgrims' feet offering them maize and turkeys. Our mythological buckled hat pilgrims straight off the Mayflower likely did not sit down at any table anywhere, let alone with the natives of the region we now call New England. There is however a 1st hand account in a letter form from around that time of the first English settlements of Prospectors (not religious pilgrims but gold hunters seeking riches in the new lands) that a “harvest festival” of sorts occurred over the course of weeks involving the hunting of wild game (deer, wild turkeys, bear) and the sharing of cranberries, gourds and tubers by the local native friendlies. Likely, the “settlers” were starving to death on their own with no knowledge of what was edible in the inhospitable places they chose to set up camp, and having no supplies from England left over, the aboriginals may have felt sorry for some of them and shown them what to do. Or for the sake of trading for weapons to gain strength over another nation, they brought the prospectors food. The original table is a myth taught to school children. Just as the belief that the original settlors came in the name of religious freedom and that Columbus discovered America. The actual first settlements in what is now the United States America were all about gold and riches. The actual first settlement in the United States in St. Augustine - and that was under the guise of saving souls by the Catholic church but it really was about the protection of Spanish gold from South America. But if there was truly to be a first North American Thanksgiving it would be the priests and Spanish military landing at what is now called St. Augustine and meeting The Timucuans, a truly kind and docile native people of Northeastern Florida, who took immediately to the prayers and symbols of the Catholic priests, and all of them celebrated together the mass and feast of St. Mary at El Nombre Dias (there is still in a cross in the ground today where this happened). They all prayed together, Timucuan, Spanish sailors and soldiers, Catholic priests - and they offered thanks and praise to god and the great mother, and they shared in a feast of shellfish provided to them by the friendly natives. But as England and Spain were rivals in the prospecting of North America for gold and riches, this story of a true first Thanksgiving (coming together in gratitude and prayer to the universal force that loves and protects us) is not in the common mythology of the United States. In fact it is buried in the annuls of Florida history as Florida did not become a state released from Spain until just before the US Civil War. So, let’s move forward in time a bit to when we have a thriving New England after the Revolutionary war when we are an independent nation open to those seeking freedom of religion, opportunity to farm, and asylum from persecution. It was during these times that we have huge influxes of Puritans who had Thanksgiving as a time of prayer. Entire days devoted only to giving thanks to God for everything in creation. For a long time this day of prayer and observance was the equivalent of our modern day Christmas celebrations because in puritanical christian practice the giving of gifts and worshiping saints like the Catholics and Lutherans was looked down upon. Puritans were very austere and labeled any festivals as negative, wasteful, and involving satanic invitations. So instead they prayed and gave thanks and this holy time generally occurred around the beginning of November - the early parts of winter and the late stages of Autumn when it was important to count your blessings and prepare for the meager months ahead by working hard to fill your stores. Pigs and Poultry would be slaughtered and salted and prepped for winter storage. So there would be a time of feasting as things that couldn’t be stored had to be ...
