Dear Co-laborers with Christ,

As you receive this pastoral letter, the annual celebration of Thanksgiving is over. Now, our society begins to celebrate Christmas. (Actually, the cultural celebration began weeks ago). Still, as all the planning begins for our liturgies and family celebrations, I invite you to reflect on thanks giving.

Thanksgiving is in many ways the strangest of all our national holidays, an event that is apparently religious in content and origin that is observed by government proclamation. I’m not sure if the President issues a Thanksgiving Proclamation anymore (I do know that a turkey or two are “pardoned”), but I remember the reading of that proclamation as being an important part of the observance of this day when I was growing up. The observance commemorates one of the oldest events in the history of the European colonization of our continent but has only recently become a uniformly celebrated national holiday.

The day commemorates events that occurred in Plymouth Colony, in what would become Massachusetts, in the year 1620, more than 370 years ago, and more than 150 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

A day of thanksgiving was first proclaimed by President George Washington in 1789, but did not become an annual affair. Celebrated regionally and sporadically, primarily in New England, it was not nationally revived until the time of the Civil War, when a national proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The annual celebration was set by act of Congress as the fourth Thursday in November in 1941 – again in wartime.

Clearly, this is a day with religious overtones, but is it a religious holiday? Since those who would separate all religious aspects out of government and official public life entirely have not weighed in on the constitutionality (or unconstitutionality) of Thanksgiving – at least not yet – it may safely be assumed that Thanksgiving is regarded as a national holiday but not a religious day, at least not officially. Indeed, few regard it as primarily religious.

Rather, Thanksgiving is a cultural festival that is intended primarily to celebrate American values. After all, this day is not celebrated the way we celebrate it, in any other country. One might as well inquire how the French or the English celebrate the Fourth of July.

We celebrate our wealth, our land of plenty. We give thanks for the bounties of a bounteous land and do so with groaning tables and overfull bellies, many of us eating far more than we should, and encouraging others to do so as well – isn’t this the point? We do what we can to make sure that on this day, at least, the poor and the hungry among us will be able to overeat, too. Diets are dismissed, and in the newspapers on the days that follow we can read expert recipes for leftovers.

Thanksgiving Day was once the official end of the football season, marked by championship face-offs and the confrontation of local rivals, before that sport became a cult in itself and now is played virtually all year long. But of course, the main function of Thanksgiving Day is to officially inaugurate the Christmas (shopping) season. Macy’s annual parade always ends with the arrival of Santa Claus, and retailers, who hope to break into the black in terms of sales on that day, dub the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday.” For those who care about such things, the First Sunday in Advent – indeed, the season of Advent itself – has long since been eclipsed by the Thanksgiving rush to celebration.

Some go to church on Thanksgiving, but this is not a high priority for most, even pious and regular worshippers.

Now, all of this is good. This is a good holiday. It is the occasion for the gathering of extended family, for reunions, for close-to-home traditions, for bittersweet remembrances of loved ones no longer present to celebrate with us. The feeling of “no place like home for the holidays” gets into high gear quickly on the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year. But our observance of this day can be even more than it is. It can be an opportunity that we can claim to focus our attention on the condition of our lives and to reflect on the dynamics of our thanksgiving throughout the year. After all, we ought to be giving thanks every day. This particular holiday is especially appropriate to give thanks because of the historical event that is commemorated.

The events that we remember on this day are more complex than the picture most of us were first taught in school. Suffice it to say that this commemoration, while for us a celebration of plenty, originated in scarcity and hardship of such severity that is hard for us to imagine. The first celebration, such as it was, was a celebration of survival after the first harvest at Plymouth Colony following a devastating winter. For the handful of settlers who were present, the celebration had large existential relevance.

Who were these people we usually call “Pilgrims”? They were actually Puritans who had both a religious and an economic motivation for leaving England for settlements beyond the sea. Schools often make a large point of the religious motivation. It is important to note, however, that economic motivation was at least as strong. In fact, the migration of these people to the New World was brought about by a complex combination of both religious and economic factors.

Economic factors: For 250 years prior to 1600, England had been turning serfs off the land in order to raise sheep for the growing wool market in Europe. Wool mills grew in England, but unemployment remained high. Manufactured goods required an expanding market. This, along with high unemployment (also seen as overpopulation) provided motivation for colonization.

Religious factors: The new Anglican Church, founded by Elizabeth I (daughter of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn, whose marriage was never sanctioned by the Pope) pleased neither Catholics nor the more liberal Protestants. Because the Sovereign was now the head of the church, laws were passed to establish religious conformity. By the time of Elizabeth’s successor, James I, all subjects were forbidden by law to be absent from regular Anglican services, to hold unauthorized religious meetings, or to leave the realm without the consent of the king. Puritans differed among themselves, but most were nonconformists who sought to reform the Church of England from within. A small minority were Separtists, radically committed to congregational autonomy.

A small group of these Separtists slipped away from Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, to Holland prior to 1620. In Holland, they could worship freely, but being aliens they could not join the Dutch craft or trade guilds and had to be content with menial labor and low pay. Some of them made financial arrangements with the Virginia Company to colonize America by traveling to the already established English colony at Jamestown. Their small ship was blown off course in the North Atlantic and, on a bleak December day in 1620, 102 Puritans on board the Mayflower, made landfall at Plymouth in New England, where there was no colony as yet. In spite of poor planning and short supplies, the weather forced them to stay where they were. There, they attempted to make a home. During that first winter, half of them died.

Imagine the hardship and the enormity of the undertaking. Few of us could have survived.

The first harvest in the following year (1621) was cause for Governor William Bradford to proclaim an official day of thanks and celebration – a celebration of survival. Friendly and helpful Native Americans in the region participated in the feast. The celebration naturally had a religious character for the settlers, who shared a common faith, a common heritage, and a common experience. The fare consisted of maize, oysters, and – tradition says – four wild turkeys. This is what we now remember as the First Thanksgiving.

What is often overlooked is the fact that, had it not been for the Native Americans and the help they gave to the settlers, that first Thanksgiving feast would not have been possible. History has preserved the names of two of these helpful natives—Samoset and Tisquantum (called “Squanto” by the settlers who apparently had trouble with the correct pronunciation). Algonquian was the language of the tribes in this region, a language notoriously difficult for the Europeans to learn. The settlers had not the time nor opportunity to master it. The Native Americans were able to offer aid to the settlers because “Squanto” spoke English! His life story is rarely taught, but it is fascinating and instructive.

The Pilgrim separatists of the Plymouth Colony were not the first English persons to land on New England’s shores. Others had come before, though had not established a permanent settlement. Sometimes these fishermen and seafarers took Native Americans back to Europe with them. This was the case with Squanto, who was picked up and carried off to England by a seafarer named George Weymouth in 1605. Whether or not he went voluntarily is not known. In any case, Squanto spent nine years in England, working at various jobs before returning to the New World as an interpreter for John Smith (of “Pocohontas” fame) in 1613. Smith granted Squanto his liberty in gratitude for his help. But a short time later, Squanto and nineteen other members of his tribe were kidnapped by another Englishman who forced them to go to Málaga, Spain, and sold them into slavery. Squanto worked as a house servant in Spain until he was able to escape to England, where he worked briefly for a London merchant. He was finally able to join an exploratory expedition bound for the New England coast in 1619—one year before the Pilgrim separatists arrived. Upon his return, Squanto—now having been gone for fifteen years—found that his tribe had been wiped out by smallpox, an imported disease almost certainly introduced by visiting sailors. It would be understandable if Squanto had chosen to kill or at least ignore the latest band of English settlers, but apparently he possessed a forgiving nature and instead gave them assistance.

Our Thanksgiving celebration, then, is also a feast of reconciliation, not merely of plenty. It might remind us that it is possible for people to come together in a common celebration in spite of differences, in spite of resentments, in spite of past injustices. Thanksgiving Day can be a celebration of hope and promise for our nation … and our church. That old native, Squanto, can serve as our example and inspiration. Our annual day of Thanksgiving has passed. May God grant that our spirit of reconciliation may never end.

Faithfully, your bishop,
+ B. Penrose Hoover

November 26, 2007