Posted on 11/22/2004 8:54:33 AM PST by FreeKeys
Did you know that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the triumph of private property and individual initiative?
William Bradford was the governor of the original Pilgrim colony, founded at Plymouth in 1621. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their financiers required. Land was owned in common. The Pilgrims farmed communally, too, following the "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" precept.
The results were disastrous. Communism didn't work any better 400 years ago than it does today. By 1623, the colony had suffered serious losses. Starvation was imminent.
Bradford realized that the communal system encouraged and rewarded waste and laziness and inefficiency, and destroyed individual initiative. Desperate, he abolished it. He distributed private plots of land among the surviving Pilgrims, encouraging them to plant early and farm as individuals, not collectively.
The results: a bountiful early harvest that saved the colonies. After the harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated with a day of Thanksgiving -- on August 9th.
Unfortunately, William Bradford's diaries -- in which he recorded the failure of the collectivist system and the triumph of private enterprise -- were lost for many years. When Thanksgiving was later made a national holiday, the present November date was chosen. And the lesson the Pilgrims so painfully learned was, alas, not made a part of the holiday.
Happily, Bradford's diaries were later rediscovered. They're available today in paperback. They tell the real story of Thanksgiving -- how private property and individual initiative saved the Pilgrims.
This Thanksgiving season, one of the many things I'm thankful for is our free market system (imperfectly realized as it is). And I'm also grateful that there are increasing numbers of Americans who are learning the importance of free markets, and who are working to replace government coercion with marketplace cooperation here in America and around the world.
Paul Schmidt
PS: A special thanks to long-time Advocate volunteer Cris Everett, who told us about this neglected bit of history several years ago, and who celebrates Thanksgiving on -- you guessed it -- August 9th.
-- copied from http://FreedomKeys.com/thanksgiving.htm which was copied from the Nov. 20, 1997 issue of The Liberator Online at http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-02-num-21.htm
for more detailed accounts see The Great Thanksgiving Hoax at http://snipurl.com/apur Thanksgiving: The Producers' Holiday at http://snipurl.com/apuv and How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims at http://snipurl.com/apuw Find a general commentary, Creating Our Own Blessings at http://snipurl.com/apuy ALSO SEE: Giving Thanks for the Big Tent HERE: http://snipurl.com/apv0
Pass it along!
Rush Limbaugh talks aboiut this every year as Turkey Day rolls around.
bump.
It's nice to know one's ancestors eventually got it right. Too bad their religion has come full circle back to the left.
Should be read after the prayer.
During the Civil War, governors had not hesitated to use their Thanksgiving proclamations to show their advocacy for the Union or the Confederacy. Illinois Governor Richard Yates' 1864 proclamation stated:
”Let us praise Him that He has crowned our armies with victory, and pray our Heavenly Father that He will shield our soldiers in all their perils, lighten their sufferings on the march, in hospital and in battle – and console the hearts of their bereaved families at home – and that He may deliver our country from her enemies, and so direct the administration of our national affairs as to give all the blessings of permanent prosperity and lasting peace to our nation.”
It is no surprise that, after the war ended, a divided country found no unity in the new national holiday.
Perceived – and now hated - as a “Yankee holiday,” Thanksgiving provoked strong feelings of resentment among many southerners. The Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation issued by Andrew Johnson in 1868 expressed a wistful and modest wish:
“We are permitted to hope that long-protracted political and sectional dissensions are at no distant day to give place to returning harmony and fraternal affection throughout the Republic.”
It took many years to restore harmony and fraternal affection. Thanksgiving only gradually regained its popularity in the South. The original prewar national recognition of the Thanksgiving holiday was largely due to the influence of Sarah Josepha Hale and her widely-read Godey’s Lady’s Book. Domestic magazines, which proliferated greatly in the 1870s and 1880s, played a similar role after the Civil War. Often published in the Northeast and fond of featuring Thanksgiving menus and decorations as a theme for November, these new "lady's magazines" gradually softened the feelings of Southern women.
Marvelous idea, that. I've printed it and will do so.
Thank you for the post. I've sent it to all my friends.
I hope you and all FReepers have many blessings for which to thank our Great God this year.
Self bookmark
Close, but if you want the REAL first Thamksgiving, you have to go back a little further. From the Traditio.com web site:
"History books have long portrayed images of the US's first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with Pilgrims, dressed in black and white, sharing turkey with American Indians. (It should be noted that the Pilgrims, who came to America to escape religious persecution from the Anglicans, were themselves the perpetrators of religious persecution. When they had been in power, they had gone around the English countryside destroying Anglican altars and liturgical accoutrements because the Anglican Church was too "papish" for them. No wonder they were "persecuted.")
To the contrary, the research of Michael Gannon, an expert on Florida colonial history and professor of history at the University of Florida, over twenty years ago revealed that St. Augustine, the US's oldest city, was the site of the first Thanksgiving. This first Thanksgiving took place in 1565, 55 years before the Pilgrims landed, when the Spanish founder of St. Augustine, Pedro Menindez de Avilis, and 800 Spanish settlers shared in a Mass of Thanksgiving. Get that? A Mass, a Traditional Latin Mass.
Following the Mass, Menindez ordered a communal meal to be shared by the Spaniards and the Seloy Indians who occupied the landing site. Prof. Gannon, in his book, The Cross in the Sand, states that the nation's first Thanksgiving menu would most likely have consisted of what the Spanish settlers had with them during their voyage: cocido, a stew made from salted pork and garbanzo beans laced with garlic seasoning, hard sea biscuits, and red wine. If the Seloy natives contributed to the meal, the table would have seen wild turkey, venison, gopher-tortoise, mullet, corn, beans, and squash. [PRNewswire]
So, you traditional Catholic families, when you gather around your Thanksgiving table this year, tell your children the real story of the first Thanksgiving: that it was hosted not by the Pilgrims, but by traditional Roman Catholics, and that its centerpiece was not a turkey, but the Traditional Latin Mass."
Don't blame them for the religion. Blame the Irish invaders.
Since Virginia is in the South this is not PC of course. Those truly interested can check the real record.
A celebration of Spanish settlers sounds like something Mexicans can celebrate.
You really want people to conduct a "Traditional Latin Mass" on Thanksgiving? Is this before or after the turkey?
BTTT
Thanks for your input; every piece of historical information is valuable, fascinating and welcome. Since I don't believe you oppose the basic message of the story (you know, the one about individual initiative and private property vs. communalism), I think you'll be pleased how you have inspired me to change the first sentence at both http://freedomkeys.com/thanksgiving.htm AND http://freedomkeys.com/thanksgiving2.htm to reflect the facts!
Happy Thanksgiving!!
"You really want people to conduct a "Traditional Latin Mass" on Thanksgiving? Is this before or after the turkey?"
No more than you want them to dress up like Puritans and invite over their Indian neighbors for venison. The point of the original post was to raise awareness of an earlier historical date for the "first Thanksgiving". Mine was merely to show that the concept of "Thanksgiving" has even earlier historical roots. Of course, if you want to assist at a Traditional Latin Mass on Thanksgiving or any other time, I would encourage you to do so.
Excellent book to get for the kids to read:
Of Plymouth Plantation, Hardcover, By: William Bradford
A firsthand account of the Plymouth settlement! In this 1909 modern English translation, Governor William Bradford chronicles the hardships the Pilgrims faced. Their persecution in Europe and subsequent journey to the New World for religious freedom are clearly presented, and their endurance stands as great testimony for our children today. Includes rare excerpts from correspondence of the time. Recommended for middle and high school grades. 353 pages, hardcover.
Wait a minute. I thought it was just a coming together of the Indians and Pilgrims. We were starving....they fed us and we took their land?
I don't believe the puritans were aware of what some Spanish settlers had done. By the way, it was the English who settled America, not the Spanish. I bet if we look hard, we can find some French as well as Dutch celebrations in America that we can imitate.
No one praises the Puritans for being anti-Catholic. Absolutely not. That's not why the holiday was started.
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