FOXSYLVANIA

–As with many things, we tend to have romanticized and misconstructed how the original Thanksgiving really was.  Because we enjoy the availability of a wide range of foods year-round, we present the pilgrims as having had a soup-to-nuts feast as well.  In reality, that original feast was meat-based, and was comprised largely of wild fowl and venison, with those items provided largely through the courtesy of Chief Massasoit and his Wampanoag Indians.  Indian corn was one of the few available vegetables, and the meal probably didn’t even include sweets…those were real luxuries.  So the image of Pilgrim boys and girls playing with their mashed potatoes while waiting for their non-existent desserts was generated largely by greeting card companies and hopeless romantics.  The original Thanksgiving wasn’t either the love fest suggested by popular contemporary images; the tension between the Pilgrims and Native Americans was significant, and peace was fragile.

Nor did the Pilgrims use forks.  They ate with spoons, knives, and fingers.  Food was not passed around; rather, everyone ate what was nearest to him.  Unlike the Pilgrims, the Indians came and went during the meal, often standing and using only a knife.  During the original Thanksgiving of 1621, Chief Massasoit even sent some of his braves out to harvest a few more wild fowl to supplement the feast.  This was possibly the earliest known version of sending out for dinner in America!

Pilgrims, too, have been romanticized.  In reality, their table was always set for the benefit of the most important persons there, who got the best and first servings of food.  Lesser persons (servants and children) helped cook and serve, and then ate the leavings while sitting at the foot of the table!  This was not a society of equals, or one in which children were heavily indulged.

Don’t get me wrong…I really like Thanksgiving, if for no other reason than the fact that it is devoid of the heavily commercial trappings of Christmas.  But like Xmas, Thanksgiving has in the popular mind been transformed into something rather remote from the original circumstances…