A Tradition To Be Thankful For
They ate too much turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and fresh-made muffins.
They found room for a piece of pie covered in whipped cream, then sat around the messy dinner table sipping coffee, talking and laughing and feeling thankful for their bounty.
Their tradition didn’t involve NFL football games, as ours now does, nor my mother’s version of pumpkin pie.
Truth be told, the staples that many of us enjoy each Turkey Day were not a part of the first Thanksgiving.
In 1641, when Governor Bradford wrote a book about the history of the Plymouth settlement, he described the bountiful spread at the first Thanksgiving.
He wrote that the settlers and the Wampanoag consumed geese, duck and venison — and likely lobster, seal and swans.
They had no potatoes, since they didn’t yet grow in North America.
There was no cranberry sauce, because the colonists didn't begin boiling berries with sugar until 1671.
There wasn’t any bread because they had no ovens. And though pumpkins were plentiful, it's doubtful they had the butter and wheat flour they needed to make pie crust.
So how did the country end up with a day devoted to gorging ourselves on turkey and all the fixings?
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Copyright 2021 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
