Story of Thanksgiving

I am sure everybody has their Thanksgiving dinner recipes out. All the Thanksgiving traditions and the Thanksgiving dinners, but do you know the real story behind the first Thanksgiving dinner?

In 1621, after a very difficult year, the fifty-three surviving members of the original 102 that landed on Plymouth Rock gathered together for a three-day Thanksgiving celebration. Of the fifty-three Pilgrims that survived, only five were women.

They landed in Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. In a strange land in the middle of winter. This was not going to be easy.

In the first ten months they built seven dwellings, a meeting-house, and three small storehouses for food. They had provisions with them when they arrived, but those went  quickly in the very harsh winter. Sickness and death found its way in among them, and forty-six Pilgrims died that first year. The winter was so harsh and food and warmth were getting so hard to find, that their food ration was five kernels of corn a day.

Why did these people go through all of this? Taking their families and leaving England to start a new life in a land that they did not know?

Think about that for a moment. Put yourself in their shoes. Their devotion to God and the freedom to worship Him as they see it in the bible, drove them from the land they were born. A land where all their prosperity had to be left behind. Friends and those family members that did not go, were probably never going to be seen again. They were giving up everything. For what?

I think if I were there, I would have told them to stay. Stay in England! This is where your roots are! So what if the government tells you how to worship, and where to worship, it’s not worth going to somewhere you’ve never been. Who knows what fate awaits you over there. Even the journey by sea was long and dangerous.

Outside of a brief try at life in the Netherlands, it was agreed to go to the new land. They were not the first ones who had been there, but they were among the first colonies to stay and lay down roots in a land they would call home.

Then there was the problem of trying to set up new relationships with the Indians of that land. These Indians had seen white people come before, but now to have them stay……that was another story. The Indians were very cautious of their new neighbors.

After watching them struggle and many of them dying, the Indians made a treaty with the Pilgrims and showed them how to fish and plant food that would grow well in the soil of their new home. If it were not for the Indians, many believe all of the Pilgrims would have died that first year.

That brings us to the first Thanksgiving celebration. It was not what we do today, because the English always had a celebration that they did every year, but this time they brought in their Indian friends. The harvest had been good, because of what the Indians had taught them, and they and about sixty of their Indian friends were going to worship God and give thanks.

Remember, there were only fifty-three Pilgrims left. They survived a long winter on rationing the last few corn stocks they had left. Some of their family and friends died. They were cold, and yet they were going to feast for the next three days with their new-found friends, on the provisions that God had provided for them.

That is just amazing to me. I know that times are hard right now for a lot of us. The economy is down. Many have lost their jobs. But we live in the greatest country on the face of God’s green earth. We can worship were we want too. We can worship what we want too. We have it so good today, and all I ever hear is people complaining. Some people are such whiners and complainers, that I think if you gave them a million dollars, they would complain that the bills are too stiff. You can never make them happy.

After everything that they had been through, these fifty-three people got down on their knees and gave thanks to God for all that He had provided.

Gratitude! The missing element in our society today. We live in a, ” You owe me,” society. Everybody grabbing, taking, and never giving a thought to say thank you.

I don’t know what your tradition is at Thanksgiving, but this year at your Thanksgiving celebration, give a thought to someone or something that you are grateful for.

Find someone who is struggling, and reach out to give them a hand so that they also may enjoy a heart of gratitude and thankfulness at their Thanksgiving Celebration.

Happy Thanksgiving

Brian Gosur