[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Friday, November 15, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all.  I hope that your day is going well.

Before I begin the Daily Thought article for today, I have a big favor to ask all of you.  Some of you may not know the person about to be mentioned, but many more of you do, so here goes.

Pastor Thomas Williamson of Jackson MS, current God-led administrator of seasons-of-refreshing.net Inc., was admitted to hospital today.  As of this writing I don't know what for, but please keep this Godly man in your prayers.  On behalf of him and his wife Linda, thanks for your prayers, as I know they will be appreciated.  Linda is on dialysis, and I don't know if she was able to go for her Friday treatment, as she recently became blind.  Hopefully she was able to make it.  Again thanks for your prayers and your understanding in this matter.

And now we have a rather interesting Thanksgiving article which I hope you will like.  It's entitled "Through My Window, An Authentic Thanksgiving," by an author whose name is not given, but it is rendered as follows:

Not so long ago, I thought it would be a fine idea to have a really authentic Thanksgiving.  It would be just like that first Thanksgiving, with all the wonderful things we have come to love and cherish as traditional.

My husband wasn't really geared up for my foray into the past but suggested that the tradition of Thanksgiving Day football probably had its roots in the original holiday and should, therefore, be perpetuated at our annual event, as well.  I was pretty sure the Pilgrims and Indians didn't toss around the pigskin, but I told him I'd check.  So I set out on my quest to recreate that first memorable Thanksgiving feast celebrated by our stalwart Pilgrim ancestors almost four centuries ago.

My initial discovery was that the first Thanksgiving really wasn't.  It was a harvest feast all right, but, when the conservative Protestant Pilgrims talked about Thanksgiving, they meant a religious time of fasting and prayer.  That big feast they had in 1621 was more of a celebration that they had survived the first year and an acknowledgement that they had God to thank for it.  And the idea that the Pilgrims fixed dinner for a few visiting Indians was not quite right either.  The real story is that there were almost twice as many Native Americans as Pilgrims and the Wampanoags brought most of the food! According to the accounts of the event written by Governor William Bradford, several of the Pilgrim men provided wild ducks and geese they had shot, but it was the Indian hunters who brought along five deer to feed the crowd.  In case you were wondering about mashed potatoes and gravy, you can forget that, too.  Potatoes had only recently been "discovered" by the English, and most of them still considered the tubers poisonous.  They did have pumpkins, but not the big, fat, orange kind we have today, and certainly no pies.  Their flour had run out and there was no milk, cows being conspicuously absent from Plymouth.  They did have an abundance of fish, however, along with eels, lobster and clams.  I didn't have to wonder what my family would think about sitting down to a feast of savory Thanksgiving eels.  Cranberries were few and far between too, and fresh veggies were limited to watercress, boiled squash and beans.  No fluffy Parker House rolls either--just some fried bread made from ground corn.

The longer my research continued, the shorter my menu became.  And then I made a most interesting discovery.  By the time of this harvest feast--most likely in the early fall of 1621--there were only four adult women left in the Pilgrim band.  That meant that, at this feast for fifty English settlers and ninety Indians, the men folk must have helped with the cooking.  The menu might be disappointing, but this new wrinkle in the meal preparation cheered me right up.

That is, until I found out that the feast wasn't just a Thursday afternoon event.  It appears the festivities continued for three days.  This gives the term "leftovers" a whole new meaning! What do you do with 150 guests that just won't leave? Well, it seems my husband was right.  They played sports.  Of course, it wasn't a hotly contested football game between the Lions and the Packers, but there were sharp-shooting contests with arrows and muskets, some ballgames, and a footrace or two.

With every new discovery, I became more disenchanted.  Pilgrims didn't dress all in black and there were no starched white collars and certainly no damask cloths on long wooden tables lined with chairs.  And it wasn't even in November! I was flirting with serious disillusionment when I stumbled upon something else I didn't expect.  This harvest celebration wasn't an idea unique to the Plymouth Pilgrims.  The Native Americans had long celebrated the ingathering of their crops with feasts.  This was a cultural occasion crossing lines of race and religion.  The tradition of Thanksgiving was tied neither to recipes nor specific activities, but to the common spirit of humanity that longs to express gratitude to the One who provides and protects.

And that's when I realized that my Thanksgiving could be authentic after all.  So I roasted my turkey and mashed my potatoes.  I simmered my gravy, smothered my sweet potatoes in brown sugar, gelled my cranberries, and baked my pumpkin pies.  And when we sat down to dinner, just as our ancestors have done for hundreds of years, we joined hands and thanked God, our Creator, for the blessings of provision and protection.  We laughed and reminisced about good friends and favorite family memories.

And when the meal had ended, while the women cleaned up the kitchen and packed away tasty leftovers, our male Pilgrims and braves gathered around the glow of the television to celebrate the traditional conclusion of any authentic Thanksgiving sporting contest between two worthy opponents!

And there you have it for today.  So much for a traditional authentic Thanksgiving Day celebration and get-together.  Of course, we can do that without all the expense and work of preparing a meal, and that is to thank Almighty God in our hearts for His blessings and provisions each day.  As many of you may recall in one of my early quotes, why do we ask the Lord for more "things" or blessings when we're not thankfully grateful for what He has provided? Something to think about in this day and age.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing will have another Daily Thought message for tomorrow.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul