American Minute with Bill Federer
Pilgrims' Thanksgiving to Almighty God
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On NOVEMBER 21, 1620 (NS), the
Pilgrims
signed the
Mayflower Compact
and began their
Plymouth Colony.
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Of the 102
Pilgrims,
only
47 survived
till Spring.
At one point, only
a half dozen
were healthy enough to care for the rest.
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In the Spring of 1621, the Indian
Squanto
came among them, and showed them how to catch fish, plant corn, trap beaver, and was their interpreter with the other
Indian tribes.
Governor William Bradford
described
Squanto
as "a special instrument sent of
God
for their good beyond their expectation."
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Bradford
added:
"The settlers ... began to plant their corn, in which service
Squanto
stood them in good stead, showing them how to plant it and cultivate it.
He also told them that unless they got fish to manure this exhausted old soil, it would come to nothing ... In the middle of April plenty of fish would come up the brook ... and (he) taught them how to catch it."
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Pilgrim Edward Winslow
recorded in
Mourt's Relation
that in the Fall of 1621:
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.
They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.
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... At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the
Indians
coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king
Massasoit,
with some
ninety men,
whom for three days we entertained and feasted,
and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others.
And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time, with us, yet by goodness of
God,
we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."
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Bradford
described the same event:
"And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc.
Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion."
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The idea of a Fall day of
thanksgiving
may have come to the
Pilgrims
after they moved to Leiden, Holland, in 1609.
Dutch citizens there annually gave thanks to
God
for
William of Orange,
in 1574, ending the bloody
Spanish Furies,
where
Spain's "Iron Duke" of Alba
had butchered tens of thousands.
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Dutch historian Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs (Ph.D. Leiden, 1976), in his article "1621: A Historian Looks Anew at
Thanksgiving,"
documented that Jan Orlers, a friend of
Pilgrim
elder William Brewster, wrote of
Leiden's Thanksgiving:
"Every year
throughout the city a
General Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving
... held and celebrated on the Third of October, to
thank and praise God Almighty
that he so mercifully had
saved the city from her enemies."
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Also in Leiden was a community of
Jews
who had been driven out of Spain.
At the University of Leiden, a
rabb
i taught students
Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac
,
just as the
Pilgrim elder William Brewster
taught students
English.
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Pilgrims
would have seen
Jews
celebrating the annual
Thanksgiving Feast of Tabernacles
or
"Sukkot"
in September–October.
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Pilgrims
identified with
Jews,
who fled from
Pharaoh
across the
Red Sea
in search of their
Promised Land,
as the
Pilgrims
fled from the King of England across the sea in search of their
Promised Land.
The
Israelites
had
self-government,
called the
Hebrew Republic,
for
four hundred years
before the asked for a king. This was an example to the
Puritan Reformers
and to the
Pilgrim separatists.
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When
Harvard
and
Yale
were founded in New England,
Hebrew
was taught.
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Historian Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs explained how
Pilgrims
thank God:
"Our knowledge of the 1621
Thanksgiving
comes from
Winslow
and
Bradford.
Winslow's
choice of words, understood by his contemporaries, implies to us that the
Pilgrims
gave
thanks to God
for their preservation and for the plenty that gave hope for the future.
Winslow
specifically tells us that the colonists sat down with their Native neighbors and enjoyed several days of peaceful rejoicing together. It is a history with potent symbolism, and it needs neither apology nor distortion ..."
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Bangs
added:
"When
Winslow
described the
Pilgrims'
intention, 'after a more special manner to rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors,' he was alluding to John 4: 36 and to Psalm 33.
The first is, 'And he that reapeth, receiveth wages, & gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth, & he that reapeth, might rejoice together.'"
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On November 9, 1621, 37 more
Pilgrims
arrived on the ship
Fortune
.
The joy of greeting this second group of
Pilgrims
was quickly dampened when it was discovered they brought with them no food or supplies.
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This resulted in the
second winter
having a
"starving time,"
where at one point, each person was rationed just
five kernels of corn a day.
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Attempting to repay the "merchant adventurers" who financed their trip, the
Pilgrims
filled the
Fortune
with £500 worth of furs, but tragically the ship was captured by French pirates, leaving the
Pilgrims
in greater debt.
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In 1622, the friendly Indian
Chief Massasoit
became ill.
Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow
visited and doctored him. He thankfully regained health, which contributed to a peace which lasted over 50 years.
Edward Winslow
was especially grateful, because the
Indian tradition
was, if a person doctored a chief and the chief died, that person died too.
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Two years after the
Pilgrim
landing, there was a drought in 1623.
Edward Winslow
recorded in
Alexander Young’s Chronicles of the Pilgrims
(Boston, 1841):
"Drought and the like considerations moved not only every good man privately to enter into examination with his own estate between
God
and his conscience, and so to humiliation before Him, but also to humble ourselves together before the Lord by
Fasting and Prayer."
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Their attitude was:
- when things were bad they would have days of prayer;
- when things were real bad they would have days of fasting; and
- when things turned around they would have days of thanksgiving.
After the Pilgrims prayed and fasted, Governor Bradford wrote:
"Afterwards the Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing, caused
a fruitful and liberal harvest,
to their no small comfort and rejoicing.
For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a
day of thanksgiving.
By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine now
God
gave them plenty - for which they blessed
God.
And the effect of their particular planting was well seen, for all had - pretty well - so as any general want or famine had not been amongst them since to this day."
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Decades later, a
thanksgiving proclamation
was issued by the Governing Council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, June 20, 1676:
"The Council has thought meet to appoint ...
day of solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God
...
that the
Lord
may behold us as a people offering praise and thereby glorifying Him;
the Council doth commend it to the respective ministers, elders and people of this jurisdiction; solemnly and seriously to keep the same beseeching that being persuaded by the mercies of
God
we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and souls as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ."
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Ben Franklin
wrote of the
Pilgrims' Thanksgiving
(The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin,
editors Mark & Jo Ann Skousen, Regnery, 2006, p. 331):
"There is a tradition that in the planting of New England,
the first settlers
met with
many difficulties and hardships,
as is generally the case when a civiliz'd people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country.
Being so piously dispos'd,
they sought relief from heaven
by laying their wants and distresses before the
Lord
in frequent set
days of fasting and prayer.
Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and
like the children of Israel
there were many dispos'd to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc'd them to abandon ..."
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Franklin
continued:
"At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose and remark'd that the inconveniences they suffer'd,
and concerning which they had so often weary'd heaven with their complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the colony strengthen'd; that the earth began to reward their labour and furnish liberally for their subsistence;
that their seas and rivers were full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy, and above all, they were in the
full enjoyment of liberty, civil and religious.
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...
He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable and lead more to make them contented with their situation;
and that it would be more becoming the gratitude they ow'd to the divine being,
if instead of a fast they should proclaim a thanksgiving.
His advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every year observ'd circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish employment for
a Thanksgiving Day,
which is therefore constantly ordered and
religiously observed."
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During the Cold War,
socialists and communists
began
infiltrating education and media,
instituting a process called
"deconstruction."
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"Deconstruction"
is a type of cultural gene-replacement therapy, where the
old identity
is
removed
and
replaced
with a
new identity:
1) the younger generation of students are separated from the country's past by the negative portrayal of the country's founders.
Students not only reject the founders, but through guilt-by-association, reject the rights and freedoms which the founders established.
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Communist Party Education Workers Congress, 1918:
"We must create out of the
younger generation
a
generation of communists.
We must turn
children,
who can be shaped like wax,
into real, good communists
... We must
remove the children
from the crude
influence of their families.
We must
take them over
and, to speak frankly,
nationalize them."
2) students then move into a neutral point of view where they are open-minded to other belief systems;
3) then they are indoctrinated into accepting the socialism, communist, alternative sexual agendas, and non-biblical religions which do not believe in individual rights.
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Karl Marx
is attributed with the statement:
"Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily conquered."
Frederick Engels
wrote in
Capital, Volume I
I (1885):
"It was
Marx
who had first discovered
the great law of motion of history
...
All
historical struggles,
whether they proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other ideological domain, are ...
struggles of social classes
...
Collisions ... between these classes
are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position ... This
law,
which has the same significance for
history
as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science."
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Commenting on
Marx's socialist deconstruction,
U.S. Senate
Peter Marshall
stated (20 Centuries of Great Preaching Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):
"There was a time in these United States when
youth
was inspired by (heroes) ... Along with the ponderous Family Bible on the Victorian table and the hymn books on the old-fashioned square piano, there looked down from the walls the likenesses of our national heroes ...
Those were the days of great beliefs - belief in the authority of the Scriptures, belief that prayer was really answered, belief in marriage and the family as permanent institutions, belief in the integrity and worth of America’s great men ...
Marshall
continued:
"Then there dawned the day when the pictures of Washington and Lincoln did not fit in with our concept of modern décor ... The old Family Bible looked embarrassingly out of place ... So the pictures and the Bible were often relegated to the Attic of Forgotten Things ...
Along with our higher education came a
debunking contest.
This
debunking
became a sort of national sport ... It was smarter to revile than to revere ... more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate.
In our
classrooms
at all levels of education, no longer did we laud great men - those who had struggled and achieved. Instead, we merely ...ferreted out their faults ... They were merely ... products of their environments ..."
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Marshall
concluded:
"But we failed to realize that when we were denying the existence of great men, we were also denying the desirability of great men.
So now, many of our children have grown up without the guiding star ... holding in their hands only a bunch of ... question marks, with no keys with which to open the doors of knowledge and life ...
Thus, our debunking is ... a sign of decaying foundations of character to the individual and in the national life."
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Franklin Roosevelt
stated in his
Thanksgiving Day Proclamation,
October 31, 1939:
"More than three centuries ago at the season of the gathering in of the harvest, the
Pilgrims
humbly paused in their work and gave
thanks to God
for the preservation of their community and for the abundant yield of the soil."
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President John F. Kennedy
proclaimed a
National Thanksgiving Day,
October 28, 1961:
"More than three centuries ago, the
Pilgrims,
after a year of hardship and peril, humbly and reverently set aside a special day upon which to give
thanks to God
for their preservation and for the
good harvest
from the virgin soil upon which they had labored.
Grave and unknown dangers remained. Yet
by their faith
and by their toil they had
survived the rigors of the harsh New England winter.
Hence they paused in their labors to
give thanks
for the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by
Divine Providence.
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...
We give thanks
... for the heritage of liberty bequeathed by our ancestors which we are privileged to preserve for our children and our children's children ...
I ask the head of each family to recount to his children the story of the
first New England Thanksgiving,
thus to impress upon future generations the heritage of this nation born in toil, in danger, in purpose, and in the conviction that right and justice and freedom can through man's efforts persevere and come to fruition with the blessing of
God."
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I
n 1625, the
Pilgrims
filled two ships with dried fish and beaver skins and sent them back to the "merchant adventurers" in England, to trade for more needed supplies.
Governor William Bradford
recorded in his
History of the Plymouth Settlement 1608-1650
(rendered in Modern English by Harold Paget, 1909, ch. 6, p. 165-7):
"The adventurers ... sent over two fishing ships ...
The pinnace was ordered to load with corfish ... to bring home to England ... and besides she had some 800 lbs. of beaver, as well as other furs, to a good value from the plantation.
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... The captain seeing so much lading wished to put aboard the bigger ship for greater safety, but
Mr. Edward Winslow,
their agent in the business, was bound in a bond to send it to London in the small ship ...
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... The captain of the big ship ... towed the small ship at his stern all the way over.
So they went joyfully home together and had such fine weather that he never cast her off till they were well within the England channel, almost in sight of Plymouth.
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... But even there she was unhapply taken by a Turkish man-of-war and carried off to Saller (Morocco), where the captain and crew were made slaves ...
Thus all their hopes were dashed and the joyful news they meant to carry home was turned to heavy tidings ..."
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Governor William Bradford
continued:
"In the big ship
Captain Myles Standish
... arrived at a very bad time ... a plague very deadly in London ...
The friendly adventurers were so reduced by their losses last year, and now by
the ship taken by the Turks
... that all trade was dead."
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Muslim piracy had dominated the seas.
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In 1605,
St. Vincent de Paul
was sailing from Marseille, France, when he was captured by
Muslim Barbary pirates.
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He was sold into slavery in Tunis, North Africa.
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Fortunately, after two years
St. Vincent de Paul
was able to convert one of his owner's wives to
Christianity,
and then afterwards,
his owner converted
in 1607.
He escaped to Europe where
he started religious orders to care for the poor and suffering in hospitals.
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Between 1606-1609, Muslim pirates from Algiers captured 466 British and Scottish ships.
Giles Milton wrote
White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves
(UK: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2004).
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In it, he told how in 1625,
Muslim corsair pirates
sailed up the Thames River and
raided England.
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They attacked the coast of Cornwall, captured 60 villagers at Mount's Bay and 80 at Looe. Muslims took Lundy Island in Bristol Channel and raised the standard of Islam.
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By the end of 1625, over 1,000 English subjects were sent to the slave markets of Sale, Morocco.
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In 1627, Algerian and Ottoman Muslim pirates, led by
Murat Reis the Younger,
raided
Iceland,
carrying into slavery an estimated 400 from the cities of Reykjavik, Austurland and Vestmannaeyjar.
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One captured girl, who had been made a slave concubine in
Algeria,
was rescued back by King Christian IV of Denmark.
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In 1631, the entire village of
Baltimore, Ireland,
was captured by Muslim pirates, led by
Murat Reis the Younger.
Only two ever returned. (Des Ekin,
The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates,
O'Brien Press, 2006).
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Thomas Osborne Davis wrote in his poem,
"The Sack of Baltimore"
(1895):
"The yell of 'Allah!' breaks above the shriek and roar;
O'blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore."
By 1640, hundreds of English ships and over 1,500 British subjects were enslaved in
Tunis
and in 3,000
Algiers.
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At the Bicentennial Celebration of the landing of the
Pilgrims
at
Plymouth Rock,
December 22, 1820,
Daniel Webster
declared:
"We have come to
this Rock,
to record here our homage for our
Pilgrim Fathers;
our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors ...
and
our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty,
for which they encountered the
dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile,
and
famine
...
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... We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was laid; where the hearths and altars of
New England
were first placed;
where Christianity, and civilization
... made their first lodgment, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness."
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Governor William Bradford
wrote of the
Pilgrims:
"They shook off the
yoke of anti-christian bondage,
and as ye
Lord's free people,
joined themselves (by a
covenant of the Lord)
into a church estate, in ye fellowship of ye
Gospel,
to walk in all his ways, made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the
Lord
assisting them."
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On November 12, 1620, the first full day in the New World,
Governor Bradford
described the
Pilgrims' thankfulness:
"Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the
God of Heaven
who had brought them over the
vast and furious ocean,
and delivered them from all the
perils and miseries
thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element."
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Pilgrim elder William Brewster
commented:
"The
church
that had been brought over the ocean now saw
another church, the first-born in America,
holding the same faith in the same simplicity of
self-government
under
Christ alone."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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