Proposed law, politics of Thanksgiving

The Island Now

Politics pervades the season.

Even Thanksgiving, which is regularly reinterpreted to justify the prevailing political themes of the day.

Thanksgiving has been portrayed as a day of ecumenical gathering but one which suggested the supremacy of the Pilgrims over the (savage) Native Americans, who are depicted in an early painting as sharing the bounty of the Pilgrims’ harvest.

In fact, the first Thanksgiving was a three-day feast held in Plymouth in the fall of 1621, sometime between September 21 and November 11. The Pilgrims – 52 English people – were joined (and vastly outnumbered) by about 90 of the local Wampanoag tribe, including Chief Massasoit, who likely brought much of the feast that was enjoyed by all.

Within two more generations of the First Thanksgiving, the whites would annihilate Massasoit’s grandchildren in Prince Philip’s War. Since 1970, the Wampanoag and other native tribes in the Plymouth area have held an anti-Thanksgiving event, “The Day of Mourning.”

Today, the Wampanoag people are a little more forgiving. They write that after generations of eradicating Indians from most of the European settlements, the First Thanksgiving seemed to be an example “of the respect that was possible once, if only for the brief span of a single generation in a single place, between two different cultures and as a vision of what may again be possible someday among people of goodwill.”

If anything, thanksgiving was a Native American tradition.

“For centuries, the Algonquian Indian peoples of New England practiced rituals of feasting and giving thanks throughout the year – in every season, for every harvest,” reports Old Sturbridge Village.

Colonial communities’ Thanksgiving celebrations were more sporadic, and were organized around harvest time. “Even though Thanksgiving wasn’t an official holiday in early New England, it was still a favorite time for family gatherings, feasts, and weddings, since the harvest was done, and farm families had time to celebrate and give thanks.”

Moving forward, Thanksgiving became a day for national pride, as in 1789, when President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26 to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer,” to especially give thanks for the opportunity to form a new nation and the establishment of a new constitution. But even then, there was no annual, national holiday.

From the early 1820s, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and author of the famous “Mary Had a Little Lamb” nursery rhyme, envisioned a national, annual Thanksgiving holiday as a way to infuse hope and belief in the nation and the Constitution.

Then, at a time when the nation was torn asunder, Thanksgiving became a day for unity.

During the Civil War, Lincoln embraced this concept as a way to bring the nation together. On October 3, 1863, Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation that declared the last Thursday in November (based on Washington’s date) to be a day of “thanksgiving and praise.” For the first time, Thanksgiving became a national, annual holiday with a specific date.

By the 1890s, there was a new objective for the Thanksgiving holiday, as a way to assimilate the waves of immigrants who were needed to man America’s booming, industrializing economy.

It is fascinating to learn from Karin Goldstein, curator of Original Collections at Plimoth Plantation, which re-creates the Pilgrim settlement, that it was the Daughters of the American Revolution who, in 1921, came up with the idea of injecting the story of the First Thanksgiving as an expression of American ideals – of coming to America for a better life – into public school curriculum, complete with activities like turkey cut-outs.

I imagine at the time the immigrants thought the lesson of Thanksgiving was that America is a nation of immigrants, the Pilgrims included, who came to the New Land for opportunity and freedom.

But with immigrant-bashing of recent years, the moral of the Thanksgiving holiday changed yet again, to confer the legitimacy of European Christian domination over the native people, who only two generations removed from that 1621 harvest feast, were already battling to displace from the land they now claimed a divine right to possess.

This year, we hear about the Tea Party revising the story, yet again, to be a parable of the supremacy of Capitalism over Socialism – suggesting that the Pilgrims began in the New World as socialists but because of the failure of that system, was overthrown by capitalism.

But we checked with the historians at Plimoth Plantation – who I regard as the keepers of the truth regarding Thanksgiving.

The early Pilgrims – who were not all Puritans and did not all come for religious freedom – came mainly for land and opportunity. Europe had a system of primogeniture – where the eldest son inherited all the property – and there was no land to be had. Their voyage to the New World was financed by creditors and were contractually bound to stay together, work together, to pay them off. Their contract was set to expire in seven years, in spring, 1628. (When you visit Plimoth Plantation, where interpreters take on the persona of actual historic figures of the Colony, you hear how anxious they are to set off on their own.)

In fact, they were not able to completely pay off their debt – many died, meaning there was less labor to get the work done, and two of the ships with goods they were sending back to England to repay their debts were taken by pirates.

But it is utter nonsense that they intended to create a socialist society, and it was its failure that resulted in rejecting it in favor of capitalism. The pilgrims never intended to remain a communal society; on the other hand, working together is how they were able to survive those first difficult years. And even today, the essence of our communities is that there are public squares and parks and roads, “the commons” that belong to all.

I choose the version of Thanksgiving that reminds us of these key themes: a nation of immigrants who value the American ideals of freedom and opportunity and diversity.

In that spirit, Congressman Gary Ackerman is circulating a letter among House Democrats urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to schedule a floor vote on the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) during the lame-duck session of Congress, which is set to resume the week of Nov. 29. The letter, which Ackerman began to circulate late Thursday, currently has more than 40 co-signers.   

The DREAM Act would enable undocumented children – who were brought to the United States before their 16th birthday and have lived in the U.S. for at least five years with no criminal record – to earn permanent legal status, and begin the process towards citizenship through attending college or joining the Armed Forces. The DREAM Act would benefit an estimated 934,000 students presently in elementary or secondary school. Many of these students have no memory of life in a country other than the United States.

“Many of these young people have spent almost their entire lives in the United States, now desperately hoping that the DREAM Act would be enacted so they could have the same opportunities to pursue the American dream as their classroom peers,” Ackerman wrote his colleagues. “Unfortunately, they have been held hostage by a national immigration debate that has been both hostile and overtly partisan. 

 “These children are blameless. For many of them, America is the only home they have ever known and English is the only language they speak. Holding these children accountable for an immigration status they did not choose and could not control is grossly unfair. 

 “Now is the best opportunity we may have to pass the DREAM Act. Any further delay imperils the chance for these young people to eventually legalize their status and pursue a higher education,” he wrote.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the Congress should take up the DREAM Act and pass it.

Each year, Great Neck puts its own stamp on the meaning of Thanksgiving, with a Thanksgiving Interfaith Service, organized by the Great Neck Clergy Association. This year, the service was held at All Saints Episcopal, on Monday, November 21.

And to get a sense of what Native American traditions were like at the time our area was settled by the English, go to Garvies Point (which last weekend had its annual Native American feast). And there is still time to celebrate an 1863 Thanksgiving, just as Lincoln would have had it, at Old Bethpage Village Restoration, Nov. 27 and Nov. 28, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Karen Rubin

 

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