Thanksgiving

As either history or myth has reminded us, the very first Thanksgiving celebration was attended by the newly-arrived, immigrant Pilgrims and the local Native Americans, the Wampanoag tribe living in the area for around 10,000 years.

These Mayflower pilgrims were considered armed and dangerous as they had fled England originally to protest King Henry the VIII dissolution of the Catholic church in favor of his invention, the Church of England. Henry was on a vendetta to get rid of those who opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn while still married to Queen Katherine, his wife of 24 years.

It was a nasty affair which included burning churches, loyalty oaths, mock trials, the old executioners sword got a bit dull from overwork. In the midst of this chaos, the Pilgrims formerly known in England as radicalists, moved in the dead of night to the Netherlands where they became increasingly hated for not speaking the language and offending the lenient Dutch who did not need or welcome criticism of their way of life and the radicalists’ children had grown to like their new freedoms Time to move.

So, the Pilgrims again set sail back to England where there were a few who had sympathy for these supporters of neither the Church of England or the Catholic church. The Pilgrims entered into a financial contract with a company to start the Plymouth Colony in NEW England.

The Pilgrims would get ships and supplies in return for sending back the wealth they would discover in NEW England, Some thirty years later, the contract had not been fulfilled. The original Pilgrims had fired first one leader and then another, broke into factions, half of them died the first year from starvation and the hostile environment. A disaster.

That First Thanksgiving was truly one of Thanksgiving as they had been saved from complete annihilation by the Wampanoag tribe whom taught them to eat off the land. The Pilgrims came almost totally unprepared to start a colony except for dreams.

As of this writing our population is 324,931,791, nearly 2,300 births every day, and 1,504 dying each day. Where did all these people come from? According to latest figures by the United States Census Bureau, over 15% claim German ancestry, followed by Irish with 11%, 9% African, followed by representatives from 100’s of countries from all over the globe.

If we could go around our table on this Thanksgiving today, we would find ancestry back to Germany, Poland, Sweden, English, France, and Middle Eastern who all came together to be American. My latest relative to become a United States citizen in 2017 is from Pakistan and lives in Oklahoma. We are still in the melting pot.

So let us count our blessings on this day that so many who came before us had a dream and that we continue to dream today.