This article is republished by the National Catholic Reporter from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
How the Plymouth Pilgrims took over Thanksgiving
Thomas A. Tweed
as a historian of religion, I feel obliged to recount how popular interpretations of Thanksgiving also have pulled us apart.
Communal rituals of giving thanks have a longer history in North America, and it was only around the turn of the 20th century that most people in the U.S. came to associate Thanksgiving with Plymouth "Pilgrims" and generic "Indians" sharing a historic meal.
The emphasis on the Pilgrims' 1620 landing and 1621 feast erased a great deal of religious history and narrowed conceptions of who belongs in America — at times excluding groups such as Native Americans, Catholics and Jews.
As I note in my 2025 book, Religion in the Lands That Became America, for instance, celebrants gathered for a communal feast in the late 11th century in the 50-acre plaza of Cahokia. That Native city, across the river from present-day St. Louis, was the largest population center north of Mexico before the American Revolution.
The usual depiction also de-emphasizes the tradition of officials announcing special "Days of Thanksgiving," a practice familiar to the Pilgrims and their descendants.
Harvest feast of 1621
Many Americans' view of "The First Thanksgiving" resembles the scene depicted in a Jean Ferris painting by that name. Finished around 1915, it is similar to another popular image painted around the same time, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe's "The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth."
Both images distort the historical context and misrepresent Indigenous attendees from the nearby Wampanoag Confederacy. The Native leaders wear headdresses from Plains tribes, and there are too few Indigenous attendees.
Only one eyewitness account survives: a 1621 letter from the Pilgrim Edward Winslow. He reported that the Wampanoag's leader, Massasoit, brought 90 men. That means, some historians suggest, the shared meal was as much a diplomatic event marking an alliance as an agricultural feast celebrating a harvest.
Pilgrims' primacy
The Pilgrims were latecomers to the Thanksgiving table. Lincoln's 1863 proclamation, published in Harper's Monthly, mentioned "the blessing of fruitful fields," but not the Pilgrims. Nor were Pilgrims depicted in the magazine's illustrated follow-up. The page showed town and country, as well as emancipated slaves, celebrating the feast day by praying at "the Union altar." For years before and after the proclamation, in fact, many Southerners resisted Thanksgiving, which they saw as a Northern, abolitionist holiday.
What I remember learning about the first Thanksgiving was that 45 of the original 102 of the Mayflower passengers who made up the first Pilgrims died that first year, from the harsh weather conditions and lack of food. And the ones who did survive, did so with the help of Indigenous people. I also remember learning that they were introduced to North American food such as squash, corn, and wild game such as turkey. Which are among the things we still eat at Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteYes , the mishmash of things such as Massachusetts Indigenous people wearing Plains Indian head-dresses is inaccurate. But the Thanksgiving narrative we learned is not an entirely made up story.
I read Tweed in The Conversation. He's right that colonial America was diverse socially and ethnically. Still is. That's been taught in public school for decades.
ReplyDeleteBut Tweed has not proved to my satisfaction that the Pilgrim legend, its treacly depictions, and a few sore losers down South "pulls us apart." The Pilgrims are merely symbols from our colonial hagiography that celebrate survival and gratitude.
In our corner of the cornfield, there's a community dinner. Free. Nobody's taking money or tickets. It's at the VFW hall where no denomination can hog it and no political party can make hay off it. Kids make construction paper turkeys and pumpkins as decorations. People can post stuff on the "thankful for ..." board.
Thanksgiving is for everybody. Even in my MAGA town everybody knows that.
Jean, I agree, Thanksgiving is for everybody. I remember it being one of my dad's favorite holidays; he didn't have to go to church, and other people did the work.
DeleteI also agree with Jean. I think Thanksgiving may be the only big holiday in our country that still pulls everyone together. (Unless trump talk ruins the family gathering.)
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DeleteWhen my Uncle Dick would get going on one of his weird political screeds, my gramma would say, "Say, Dick, run out to the kitchen and get that coffee can off the top shelf while I cut you another piece of pie." Didn't dawn on me until l was a teenager why a woman barely 5 feet tall would keep her coffee where she couldn't reach it. Thanksgiving offered many lessons in gratitude, subterfuge, and distraction.
DeleteGreat story, Jean. Thanks.
DeleteIt’s gotten cold here, by mid- Atlantic standards. But not cold like the standards of everyone else here. I’m reading about snow and very cold temps in Chicago, Michigan, Ohio. How is everyone doing? Stay safe!
Winter storm warnings here in Michigan this afternoon to Sunday morning. This is mostly lake effect, so snow dissipates as it moves east. We are in middle of state, so only 3-5 inches expected locally, but high winds and cold temps will cause drifting, so driving will suck.
DeleteWe got ~9 inches of snow. I think it has finally moved out. A lot of shoveling the last two days. I'll get back out there later today to clear the sidewalk.
DeleteI learned what Katherine recounted about Thanksgiving (although she remembers more details than I did), but the pilgrim and Indians story never has resonated much with me. I guess I don't see the pilgrims as my people. My forebears were Catholic immigrants who came in the 19th Century, or Southerners who found their way to the Midwest.
My own heritage is 19th century Irish and German. But my husband’s heritage, and so too our sons’ heritages, go back to the Puritans in the 1630s. Our grandchildren have the blood of different generations of immigrants from different parts of the world - England , Scotland, Germany, Ireland, France, Africa, Viet Nam, Poland. Nobody on the Mayflower though. PBS had a good documentary a couple of years ago about the Mayflower voyage. I hadn’t remembered that initially they landed in what is now Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. They had been aiming for the Virginia area I believe. A bit off course. But the sandy soil wasn’t much good for farming so they moved on after a while to the mainland, landing in the area of the coast we now call Plymouth. Disease wiped out many pilgrims and natives the first winter there.
Delete9” is a fair amount. Better than 2’ but still enough that it has to be cleared. In the 30s here’s gray and rainy. But no snow!😁. Yet.
DeleteMy forebearers were Catholic immigrants who found their way here in the 19th or early 20th century from Poland, Lithuania, and Germany. So, the Revolution, Civil War, and relationships with Blacks and Indians were about WASP (white anglo-saxon Protestant) Americans not us Catholics.
DeleteGrowing up before Kenedy became President, we Catholics saw America as a place in which we had not fully made it. We were regarded as intellectually inferior producing priests and lawyers not scientists. Our universities and colleges were second class catering to Catholics. We had created educational, healthcare and social service systems to save us from being either absorbed by Protestants or discriminated against.
Many of us went to public schools which were dominated by a Protestant ethos, prayer and bible reading before the beginning of the day and several Protestant teachers who looked down upon us Catholics, and Protestant baccalaureate services. My aunts told of KKK cross burnings against Catholics during their high school years.
Of course, all that changed in 1962 with Pope John and John Kenedy. We Catholics had captured the world and nation's attention. Many of my generation who once had thought of the priesthood and religious life as the only attractive careers were inspired to become involved in the Peace Corp, the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.
Of course, the religious Camelot of Vatican II and the civil Camelot of the Kenedy presidency proved brief as chaos descended upon both our Church and Nation. Could Camelot bloom again under American Popes, first Francis and now Leo?
The Catholic vision of America is one that includes both North and South America. Thomas Merton at his naturalization ceremony said that he was both North and South American and combining their virtues was essential for the future. He had asked his Abbot (unsuccessfully) to go to a monastery in Latin America.
DeleteWe have been threatened with Lake effect snow for the past several days but only a few inches have come done. That could change at any time.
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DeleteJim, according to the Chicago Sun Times (?) Saturday’s snow in Chicagomset a record for November
DeleteSorry, originally responded to Jim, but then several others added posts.
DeleteMy fam is mostly UK Protestant with some Dutch and Irish thrown in. I was surprised by how many branches go back to the 1600s in America, but I don't feel any special affinity for the Pilgrim Thanksgiving. My people were part of the second wave to New England--out to make a buck off the cheap land, not very religious, and kind of mouthy.
But I still like Thanksgiving as an invitation to feel grateful for whatever comforts America offers you and to think about trying to extend them to others.
Jean - “ I still like Thanksgiving as an invitation to feel grateful for whatever comforts America offers you and to think about trying to extend them to others.”
DeleteThats a good way to look at it. I don’t think the Pilgrim story really resonates with many as much as just feeling thankful for the good.
I think Jack's story is interesting. Clearly he is close to his ethnic and Catholic roots. A convert like me will never feel that kind of attachment to the Church. I never saw JFK as one of "us," I think the Camelot myth was mostly PR to shore up the political careers of later Kennedys, and I see most Vatican II reforms as long overdue changes. I see Francis and Leo as holy men swimming against the tide of American Republican Catholicism.
DeleteInterestingly, The Boy does feel Catholic, and not in an American Republican way. Catholicism seems to be where he starts talking about religion to people. I tend to think that the religious education he received from CCD was boring and thin gruel, but he has different memories and a whole different upbringing from me. Seed falls on fertile and infertile ground.
"I think Jack's story is interesting. Clearly he is close to his ethnic and Catholic roots."
DeleteI don't feel that I am Polish, or Lithuanian, or German. My Grandparents did, because they spoke the languages. But not my parents nor I. But I do feel deeply Catholic from the day of my birth since I was baptized on that day because my mother was given the last rites. I wasn't in danger of death: the priest was just being super cautious.
However, because I discovered the Hours, the Divine Office when I was in eighth grade, I have always thought of my Catholicism as something God gave me, not something given to me by priests, or nuns or my parents.
As soon as I was able to drive at age 16, I became very self- educated in liturgy, etc. from Saint Vincent's Seminary library.
A public high school math teacher lent me his copy of Merton's Seeds of Contemplation which helped to develop the solitary contemplative dimension of my life. That teacher had a bachelor's degree from Harvard and like my English mentor in college was a deeply intellectual person widely read in many disciplines including theology. Those two persons more than any others served as life-long intellectual role models. Neither was well appreciated by the clergy in their universities. They both started me on a life-long self-education in theological disciples.
When I retired, I got a master's degree in Notre Dame's summer program mainly to figure out how much I really knew. They had a world class faculty in many cases in small classes of a dozen or more people. I think my life-long learning in theology has made me more like an ABD level person with in-depth abilities in scripture, liturgy and spirituality. While I am good in Latin and Greek, I am not good in German, French and Italian the languages of much of international theology. I would have a tough time doing a dissertation without reading some books in those in the original languages. However, there are many theology PhDs who continue to read little of those languages and write mainly from and to the English language theology publications. That is where I am, I could do that.
I feel similar to Jean: Thanksgiving is a day to offer gratitude to God and others.
DeleteI really like the family aspect of the holiday. I won't claim our family is nut-free, but we all get along and tolerate - and maybe even love - one another for a day.
I also enjoy the football, at least the early game, which is always the Detroit Lions. My family has Michigan roots, so it's fun to watch the game with a group.
I did notice this year that my mom slipped a bit. Cooking the Thanksgiving dinner is the high point of her year, and she is not the kind of person to ask for help (or, honestly, to always welcome it graciously), but this year she needed more help and seemed to acknowledge the reality. She is 86, and it's a big deal to cook for a lot of people. So we tried to be helpful. Being grateful for my parents is at the top of my gratitude list.
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DeleteJack: Sorry, you noted yr ethnic background, so I thought that was a relevant part of the picture.
DeleteMy religious evolution (and devolution) was probably more emotional than intellectual like yours. Unitarians talk and talk and study and read, but it never kept the nightmares at bay. There's a joke about how there are two doors at the Pearly Gates: One marked "Heaven" where most people go in and another marked "Discussion on Heaven" for the Unitarians.
Jim, hats off to your mom for getting a big meal together. My gramma still put on a feed until she died at 95, but the last 10 years she mostly supervised my uncle and they could get to squabbling sometimes.
DeleteWell, I guess the indigenous have problems with it. Thanks-taking Day. My cousins didn’t discuss anything political and neither did I so I don’t know if their politics evolved any. It has to be confusing for MAGA people these days.
ReplyDeleteSeveral commentators are discussing the cracks in the trump voting coalition. The hardcore MAGAs still approve of him overwhelmingly, but it seems Republicans from the more traditional GOP side are not happy with him. Maybe your relatives really are confused right now. Glad the dinner was ok.
DeleteI think the tariffs, and the willingness to sacrifice Ukraine on the altar to Putin, are unforced political errors (not to mention immoral).
DeleteAre we talking politics again? Holuday's over. Story in the Guardian suggesting ways Trump has used international maneuvering to make money for Trump, Inc. Hard to prove, plus I don't think a lot of Americans care because a worse crime in America than being a crook is being a loser on the dole.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/nov/30/all-the-presidents-millions-how-the-trumps-are-turning-the-presidency-into-riches
I think some Republicans really do care about the Epstein scandal. Also Trump's mental capacity seems to be deteriorating in real time, in front of everybody.
DeleteA lot of people who were former military are beyond disgusted at what Hegeseth is saying, that people don't have the right to disobey an unlawful order.
Pilots are being given orders to obliterate boats (20 so far, I believe) and obviously, highly trained and educated pilots are obeying those orders. Convenient to destroy the alleged criminals and the evidence. If they boarded the boats conventionally, I suppose they could still plant evidence but that is more difficult and possible to fail. Instead, Trump, Zeus-like, calls down fire from the heavens. Dead men tell no tales. Is this what our country has become or is what it’s always been being revealed?
DeleteI read Andrew Cockburn’s “The Spoils of War”. He told a tale of an A-10 Warthog pilot in Afghanistan. The A-10 can fly low and slow and the pilots can evaluate designated targets by the naked eye. This pilot was ordered to kill a group of Afghanis as Taliban. He took a flyby and saw they were farmers farming. He refused orders, even though ordered again. At that point, they ordered a bomber to do the job from a height of 30,000 feet. From that height, they’re only pixels. Mission was accomplished. Farmers dead. Another thing. Fighter missions and maintenance are expensive. It’s probably cheaper to board these boats but that’s not a real gladiator circus.
Delete“ worse crime in America than being a crook is being a loser on the dole.”
DeleteIf “ being on the dole” means accepting the relatively meager assistance available in America, I doubt the MAGAs think too hard about it. According to the data, a statistically significantly greater proportion of trump voters receive assistance of some kind than do the non- trump voters. They only get upset when they start to figure out the GOP is cutting their benefits off, even though that was explicitly promised by their man in his campaign.
The corruption in this administration is probably the worst in our history, and it’s completely open. The war crimes are open too. I don’t know if trump is giving orders or just saying to Hegseth that he should do whatever he wants to prepare the way for regime change in Venezuela. As he is saying to Putin, and to Netanyahu, as long as Israel’s actions don’t mess up trump family deals going on in the mud- east. From what I read here, he’s pretty much tuned out of hands on policy concerns these days, letting others make decisions - Ukraine, tariffs, Venezuela, healthcare, whatever. He’s more focused on destroying the graceful beauty of DC in his quest to build monuments to himself. Next up is his idea for an enormous Arc de Triomphe, and he’s now decided the Reflecting Pool on the mall doesn’t meet his standards. He has three designs and wants the biggest version of course. His ballroom architect, known primarily for designing churches and cathedrals, is now backing off because he’s told trump the 90,000 soft ballroom is not appropriate and will not look good, dwarfing the White House, but he’s helpless to stop it.. Now trump might also decide to dig up the Reflecting Pool and replace it with some other hideous monument to himself.
If our country survives, the edifices to the trumpian ego can be removed, but it may be too late for many others in the world of nations,, and also for Americans who die prematurely because they couldn’t get a vaccine or expensive healthcare, all sacrificed to the power- mad egos of trump and his appointees.
Just talking general American attitudes. Somebody who goes out and makes a lot of money is generally seen as a sharp cookie who works hard and knows how to play the angles. Everyone wants to know the folks who live in a beautiful home, have a boat or summer cottage, and take fabulous vacations. If you're on welfare, you're a wastrel who has made poor choices and are drain on the wealth of others. You get just enough to keep you off the streets, and a bag of canned food and a few toiletries at Christmastime. Nobody wants to know you.
DeleteNot so sure about all that, but that’s how you see it, or maybe experienced it. Unfortunately the very MAGAs who receive benefits do seem to admire those who are corrupt and get away with it - who can play the angles and not get arrested. Trump and his billionaire buddies don’t necessarily work hard, but they sure do know how to play the angles. If Americans admired hard work, they would admire the immigrants here, most of whom work incredibly hard and are not “ on the dole”. It seems a lot of Americans would be happily corrupts too, if they could get away with it.
DeleteAt least Katherine has a decent GOP rep in Congress.
DeleteHeather Cox Richardson
November 30, 2025 (Sunday)
On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas. Authors Drew Hinshaw, Benoit Faucon, Rebecca Ballhaus, Thomas Grove, and Joe Parkinson explained that the administration’s plan for peace was a Russian-led blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored U.S. and Russian businessmen.
Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House.
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told the journalists. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
On ABC’s “This Week” this morning, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said to host Jonathan Karl: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
There is far more at stake here than morality, although that is clearly on the table.
The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and the uneven application of the law.
It is the system Russia’s president Vladimir Putin exploits in Russia, and President Donald J. Trump is working to establish it in the United States of America.
In the New York Times today, Cecilia Kang, Tripp Mickle, Ryan Mac, David Yaffe-Bellany, and Theodore Schleifer explored the story of David Sacks, an early technology entrepreneur with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk who now advises the White House on AI and cryptocurrency policy while investing in the companies that benefit from those policies. Sacks has brought Silicon Valley leaders, including the chief executive of Nvidia, into contact with White House officials. Shortly after, the government got rid of restrictions on Nvidia’s chip sales to foreign countries, a change that could net Nvidia as much as $200 billion.
Tom Burgis of The Guardian explained today how the Trump family is using its position in the federal government to advance its personal interests and enrich itself. Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric have thrown themselves into cryptocurrency, broken ground on new golf courses, and rushed through permissions for new buildings in foreign countries at the same time U.S. government policies over tariffs, cryptocurrency, and pardons, for example, seem to advance those interests.
“The Trumps’ most natural allies,” Burgis wrote, “first in business, now also in politics—have long been the rulers of the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, who see no distinction between their states’ interests and their families’.”
Bacon seems like a good guy, but didn't I read he's not running again?
DeleteThat's true, Bacon isn't running again. He's not from my district, but I always respected him. I heard his family got death threats. I don't know if that's why he isn't running again, but it was likely a factor. Pretty much everyone who pushed back against Maga has gotten threatened. Bacon is from a purple-ish district. A Democrat came close to beating him last time. There is a good chance for a Democrat to win the seat next time.
DeleteHe would have made a good Sec Def, much better than Hegseth. He retired as a Brigadier General in the Air Force. But it would be impossible for someone to serve honorably in the Trump administration in that post.
"Trump's mental capacity seems to be deteriorating in real time, in front of everybody."
ReplyDeleteI keep hearing this, most recently this morning from Raber. It sounds more like wishful thinking. What are people seeing that indicates deterioration? From the 2016 debates on, everything he said was a turgid goo of nonsequiturs, lies, distortions of reality, innuendoes, threats, and denials.
It seems to me that Trump is completely alert, on-point, and cueing right-wing white Christian nationalists day and night that he's in their camp. I don't think he's senile or deluded. I think he is now and always had been a sociopath.
Sure, he walks like an 80 year old and falls asleep when boring people are talking. But so do I, and I've been deemed mentally competent.
Unfortunately it probably doesn't matter if Trump is actually going ga-ga. He's got people like Stephen Miller doing policy, and Trump is doing his favorite activities, such as playing golf badly, tearing up the White House, and cosplaying that he is a reality host and financial genius.
DeleteI think Trump does have ongoing dementia or something. The problem is discerning it from his substandard baseline personality. His comments seem more repetitive. He’s not the scumbag he used to be. But, as for his death which I would celebrate, medical science does amazing things today in keeping things slive. And sometimes he seems to come to life, as when he was with the Saudi king. It’s not the royalty, it’s the money.
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