The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

"A Late Harvest "

READING

From "1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving," by Catherine O'Neill Grace and Margaret M. Bruchac "

In December of 1621, colonist Edward Winslow wrote a letter that briefly described the year's harvest. In 1622, this letter was included in a publication describing the beginnings of the new English plantation at Plymouth.

Winslow wrote: 'Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king, Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted . . . .'

"Over time, Winslow's account of the harvest event has become the basis for the myth of the First Thanksgiving. What actually happened during the three days that English colonists and Wampanoag people met and ate together?

". . . Most likely, the Wampanoag men built shelters to stay in for the three days while they visited the English settlement. Other Wampanoag people may have arrived later when they heard about the gathering. The leading men of the Plymouth Colony treated Massasoit as visiting royalty, showing that they respected his power and were grateful for his kindness to them.

"The Wampanoag were perhaps there more for political rather than celebratory reasons, but the concept of a harvest gathering was familiar to them. Since long before the arrival of Europeans, the Wampanoag had celebrated festivals of thanks that took place at particular times of the year, including the 'Strawberry Thanksgiving' and the 'Green Corn Thanksgiving.' At these Native festivals, the Creator's gift of food was celebrated with songs, dances, and stories that reminded the People to be generous and grateful. The bounty of the harvest was shared with the community. . . .

"The 1621 gathering in Plymouth was not a religious gathering but most likely a harvest celebration much like those the English had known in farming communities back home. The English never once used the word 'thanksgiving' in association with their 1621 harvest celebration."

SERMON

How the harvest feast that brought together the Plymouth settlers and the Wampanoag people evolved into the "First Thanksgiving" is a story that deserves a closer look. Historians have by now dispensed with this self-serving American myth. Harvest festivals and thanksgiving were activities both groups practiced - and had spiritual and religious meanings for all, but they are not what brought the English and the Indians to the table in 1621.

According to historian Charles C. Mann,[1] this event was political, especially for Massasoit, the head of the Wampanoag. The alliance he forged with the settlers of Plymouth colony, an abandoned Indian village, may have been "successful from the short-run Wampanoag perspective," because it allowed them to hold off their rivals, the Narragansett people.[2] "But it was a disaster from the point of view of New England Indian society as a whole," Mann writes, "because it ensured the survival of Plymouth Colony, which spearheaded the great wave of British immigration to New England." As we now know, the Indians had many defenses and might have held their own against European guns and greed, but they could not stand up to the onslaught of European disease.

The First Thanksgiving was a tragic milestone for the Native people of this country. That it did not even acquire this name until centuries after it actually happened is one irony to contemplate this season. Although it has escaped a specific connection to religious piety, there is a distinctive American spirit about this celebration that we should understand better. The convivial gathering of family and friends we celebrate today bears little resemblance to its origins.

The fall 1621 gathering of the European settlers and the Wampanoag took place against a backdrop of insecurity and intrigue. The Native societies were destabilized and weakened by disease. The Wampanoag had lost many of its members and were feeling threatened by the Narragansett, who lived to the west and were still strong and healthy. They harbored a well justified distrust of the Europeans as well, having fended them off for hundreds of years.

For their part, the Europeans were struggling to gain a foothold in a land they were poorly equipped to inhabit. They employed Tisquantum - known as Squanto, a Wampanoag man who had been kidnapped by the English. He traveled abroad, learned the language, and returned home to find that he was the only surviving member of his village. He served as translator and go-between. Most likely he had no where else to go.

Mann writes, "By fall [1621] the settlers' situation was secure enough that they held a feast of thanksgiving. Massasoit showed up with 'some ninety men,' Winslow later recalled, most of them with weapons. The Pilgrim militia responded by marching around and firing their guns in the air in a manner intended to convey menace. Gratified, both sides sat down, ate a lot of food and complained about the Narragansett. Ecce [behold] Thanksgiving."

The uneasy triangle of Tisquantum, the settlers, and Massasoit, and the alliance generated by a common enemy did not last long. By 1637, a day of thanksgiving meant that the colonists had prevailed in yet another conquest of the Native people. This custom continued until 1777, when "the first national Thanksgiving Day was declared by the Continental Congress after the American victory over the British at Saratoga."[3] Everything points to the conclusion that the Thanksgiving custom in our country evolved directly out of military conquests - first of the Native people, later the British. Still later, President Abraham Lincoln declared a day of Thanksgiving for the Union victory in the Civil War. A popular magazine had already been calling for a national Thanksgiving holiday, and Lincoln's proclamation clinched it.

Despite this sobering history, Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday for many of us, because it is not fraught with religious baggage or burdened with the giving of gifts. Still, it's hard to ignore the dissonance. I wonder how we should settle that with ourselves.

Richard Ford's latest novel, "The Lay of the Land," is set during the holiday season. He allows himself a few sidebars on the history and meaning of the season, written in his cynical yet affectionate style. "Thanksgiving ought to be the versatile, easy-to-like holiday,"[4] Ford writes. "It often doesn't work out that way."

He explains, "As everyone knows, the Thanksgiving 'concept' was originally strong-armed onto poor war-torn President Lincoln by an early prototype forceful-woman editor of a nineteenth century equivalent of "The Ladies Home Journal," with a view to upping subscriptions. And while you can argue that the holiday commemorates ancient rites of fecundity and the Great-Mother-Who-Is-in-the-Earth, it's in fact always honored storewide clearances and stacking 'em deep 'n selling 'em cheap - unless you're a Wampanoag Indian in which case it celebrates deceit, genocide, and man's indifference to who owns what."

It sounds like something to skip, yet few of us actually do. Most of us sit down to a meal with friends or family, genuinely happy for the occasion. It's not hard to understand why.

"Thanksgiving won't be ignored," writes Richard Ford. "Americans are hard-wired for something to be thankful for. Our national spirit thrives on invented gratitude. Even if Aunt Bella's flat-lined and in custodial care down in Ruckusville, Alabama, we still 'need' her to have some white meat and gravy and be thankful, thankful, thankful. After all, we are - if only because we're not in her bedroom slippers."

He does a nice job of breaking through the denial that surrounds this holiday. We need to hear it. The truth about us is linked to the truth about our society, and we cannot afford to live in ignorance of either. "Our national spirit thrives on invented gratitude," whether it be our competitiveness or our latest conquest. Think about it. Why are we grateful?

When I was a little girl, I would wonder at the mystery of how I was born to be myself - and not someone else. I would observe how much other people suffered through no fault of their own, and determine that equally random forces were at work in my own relatively easy life. It could have been otherwise! I thought, which frightened me. I found the Hindu concept of reincarnation unthinkable. I wondered whether there was another version of me roaming somewhere in a parallel universe, sickly and doomed. These dark thoughts had few outlets, but they did cause me to give thanks for not being someone else.

As I grew up I became personally aware of the ways in which life equalizes us. My primitive fears grew into fellow feeling. I try not to compare myself with others. I don't always succeed. I know it is something to avoid, as Richard Ford makes chillingly clear. We'll all walk a mile in bedroom slippers some day.

If we were to see through the dissonance of our culture, through to the suffering of others at the hands of our forebears; if we were to break down our denial that American gratitude is the self-serving, invented kind, glad to be ourselves rather than somebody else; if we were to reconcile ourselves to our ambiguous history; and then ask ourselves what thanksgiving means, what would be left?

One answer comes from Richard Ford. ". . . it is churlish not to let the spirit swell - if it can - since little enough's at stake," he says. "Contrive, invent, engage - take the chance to be cheerful. Though in the process, one needs to skirt the spiritual dark alleys and emotional cul-de-sacs, subdue all temper flarings and sob sessions with loved ones . . . Take B vitamins and multiple walks on the beach. Make no decisions more serious than lunch. Get as much sun as possible. In other words, treat Thanksgiving like jet lag." He tries to make it work.

For the rest of us, perhaps the answer is simply to remember that giving thanks is different from any other transaction. It's not a transaction, period. It is an opening of the heart to all that makes life possible. It's an acknowledgement that we live by the grace of the sun and rain, the harvest of food, the good will of those who care about us, and the strength that comes from knowing who we are.

Many years have passed since that First Thanksgiving. Now the surviving Wampanoag people meet in Plymouth, Massachusetts to mourn at the statue of their leader, Massasoit. The American people today must embrace the whole truth of our origins and carefully - carefully - discern how it has shaped our spirit. And then we return, however late, to a harvest of all that gives us life, a sobering tally of our transgressions and a humbling thanks for all we have been given.

[1] Charles C. Mann, “Native Intelligence,” in "Smithsonian," December, 2005. This article is an excerpt from his book "1491" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Catherine O'Neill Grace and Margaret M. Bruchac, "1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving" (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2004).

[4] Richard Ford, "The Lay of the Land" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).