Happy New Year!
Oh wait. That’s not until next week, after Christmas this weekend. At least, that’s what Thanksgiving sometimes feels like these days.
Decorations that used to go up a few weeks before Dec. 25 now appear at Halloween in some places. We all like to have a good time. But so much holiday hoopla so soon is overstuffing the turkey.
Bill Graham
I am neither Grinch nor Scrooge. But I guess I am a tad old fashioned. Some may feel that’s an indication that I’ve simply become a tad old.
Ah well, bah humbug, serve the turkey and pass the dressing and gravy please. On Thursday, I will be blessed to feast with family and enjoy their company. Then we’ll watch football. The Pilgrims had turkey but they didn’t have football.
America’s Thanksgiving has a heavy focus on what food the Pilgrims ate at the first harvest feast in Plymouth Colony in 1621. But what would be more interesting is if we had a magic computer that could zoom in on the Pilgrims with video and microphones, kind of like those cameras that dangle out over the middle of the field during an NFL football game. Oh to hear the conversations between the Pilgrims, then resident at Plymouth one year, and their Native American benefactors whose ancestors had lived there for several thousand years.
What the heck did they talk about? Politics was out. Maybe they were just chewing, swallowing, and motioning for someone to pass the squash. The Native American guests of the Pilgrims would likely be surprised, or maybe gratified, to look into a future-predicting crystal ball and see us here in Kansas City doing the tomahawk chop for the Chiefs as a major part of our harvest season celebration. They would also note that the harvest chores ahead of the feast are far different now. With winter bearing down toward us, we stroll through the aisles of a warm and brightly lit grocery store filling carts with frozen cranberries, stuffing mix, and of course a frozen turkey.
What was life like in Platte County in 1621, you wonder? Our county was on the super highway of its time, the Missouri River. People from tribes such as the Osage, Ioway, and Kansa had taken turns traversing the prairies, woodlands, wetlands, and forests that once covered the county. On that first Thanksgiving date, a good guess is that they were keeping the hearth fires burning in the lodges at night and wondering: will it be warm again this weekend or freezing cold and snowing? They may well have roasted a wild turkey, a creature then quite common in Platte County, though likely scarce within bow-and-arrow or atlatl range of the villages. Those who came before our forbearers hunted to stay alive. They may have discussed Native American politics of the day, including rumors about the horse changing life on the plains and strange white people far to the east.
We’re lucky today that, after a long absence, the wild turkey and white-tailed deer once again roam the wild places of Platte County. Or they will until all the county gets developed from Riverside to New Market. In scattered households in our county, some lucky diners this week will stick a fork into the same type of turkey or venison the pilgrims ate.
Edward Winslow, pilgrim leader, historian, and first-Thanksgiving attendee, noted that the Wampanoag Native Americans brought five deer as an offering for the feast. It should be noted that Winslow also wrote that Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford sent four men on a fowling mission ahead of the first Thanksgiving. Given the season, they may well have stocked the tables with geese, ducks, and swans. If that was the case, outdoor-going Platte Countians are still in line for an authentic celebration. We can still hunt ducks and geese in autumn.
Although, relatively recently I drove very near Plymouth Rock on the way to Cape Cod, also a haunt of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. It’s a fine place for seafood dining. Historians note the abundance and vital importance of food from the Atlantic Ocean for those who lived near the New England coast in that day. You wonder if oysters and clams were steaming in the Pilgrim pots? Just think, if history had been written slightly differently, we might be sitting down to boiled lobster and baked cod on Thursday.
Some things then and now are the same. In the rapidly changing world we live in, some things have heightened value just for being the same. The Pilgrims and the Wampanoag were grateful to be alive and enjoying the company of family and friends, despite the stresses of their time. May your Thanksgiving be old fashioned in that way, too.