Pull out your Pilgrim gear for Turkey Day

PETER BUFFA

You’re doing fine. Really. You’re halfway there. Remember, the

holidays are a marathon, not a sprint.

Halloween is done. It’s quick, it’s easy, a no-brainer, as well it

should be. The holiday muscles need to be stretched then warmed. Now

the going gets tougher.

In a few days, it’ll be Thanksgiving, which falls on the last

Thursday in November this year. You know what to do; you know when to

do it; and most importantly, you know what to eat.

That familiarity is what we love about Turkey Day, including the

story of the first one: the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in

1620. A year later, they set out a big feast to give thanks for their

first crops as winter sets in. They invited the neighbors, and

everyone ate turkey and all the fixings like they’ve never seen a

carb before.

The ritual has been repeated on the last Thursday in November

every year for the 384 years since, which is a long time. That is the

story we all know and love. Unfortunately, most of it is exactly that

-- a story.

To begin with, who were the Pilgrims and why did they dress funny?

The Pilgrims were simple people, mostly farmers with little

education, who belonged to the Puritan sect of the Church of England.

The Pilgrims thought the Reformation was moving way too slowly and

that the Anglican church needed to distance itself more from the

Roman Catholic Church. The mainstream Puritans didn’t much care for

the Pilgrims and the feeling was mutual. It was a class thing.

In 1608, a congregation of Pilgrims from a village with the

wonderful name of Scrooby said, “That’s it, we’re outta here, down

the road, gonzo,” or words to that effect.

They packed up their stuff, which didn’t take long, and moved to

Leiden in Holland. They soon discovered they liked Holland and the

Dutch about as much as they liked England and the Puritans, and the

Dutch were glad to return the favor. The Pilgrims toughed it out in

Leiden for 10 years then voted in 1617 to get on the first thing

smokin’ headed for the New World.

It took three years to come up with the cash, which they finally

did, from the Virginia Trading Co., which was looking for people to

settle land in the New World -- people with strong backs and without

overly inquisitive minds, who would be willing to take their lives in

their hands on a two-month voyage then be chased through the woods by

people and large beasts who wanted to eat them.

Half the Leiden Pilgrims said “It’s a joke, right?” But the other

half said, “I like it.” They hired a tiny ship called the Speedwell

to take them to Southampton, where they joined up with another band

of Pilgrim separatists and hired a 180-ton seafaring ship called the

Mayflower. On Sept. 16, 1620, it was bon voyage.

The first half of the voyage was fairly calm. The second half was

a nightmare. Amazingly, almost all the crew and passengers survived

-- very unusual for the time. A crewman died in the first month and

was tossed overboard, and a young man named William Butten died just

days before they reached land. Three women gave birth during the

voyage and one of them, Elizabeth Hopkins, named her baby Oceanus.

Dorothy Bradford, who was the wife of the elected leader of the

Pilgrims, William Bradford, fell off the Mayflower and drowned.

Exploring the New World was not for wimps.

On Nov. 19, they sighted a curving finger of land that would later

be called Cape Cod. They cruised the coast for weeks, dispatching

small scout parties to explore this area and that, trying to decide

where to land, if at all, with some saying, “Great. We’ve seen it.

Let’s go back.”

On Dec. 21, the entire congregation disembarked in Plymouth

Harbor, on the western side of Cape Cod Bay.

Let’s get to the important stuff. Why did they dress funny, all

black and white with big buckles on their shoes? Simple. They didn’t.

The all-black outfits with white bonnets and bibs were their Sunday

dress. Their everyday duds were the sturdy work clothes and boots

you’d expect for people who spent 14 hours a day doing farm work, no

more or less colorful than any other work clothes. The buckled dress

shoes didn’t appear until about a hundred years later.

When was the big party and has it always been held on the fourth

Thursday in November? As best we can tell, the Pilgrim thanksgiving

was in 1621, sometime between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, to celebrate the

first anniversary of their arrival at Plymouth. But it wasn’t one,

big, fancy dinner. It was three days of feasting and prayer. And yes,

they did invite some of the Native Americans to join them. But it

wasn’t an annual event, and it really wasn’t an event at all until

the mid-19th century, when people wanted to set aside one day a year

as a day of thanks. FDR officially made the fourth Thursday of

November “Thanksgiving Day” in 1939, and Congress made it a national

holiday in 1941.

OK, fine, but they did eat turkey and cranberries and sweet

potatoes and pumpkin pie, right? I am so sorry.

Turkey, yes, but the wild kind, plus lots of other wild fowl like

goose, duck, crane, partridge and lots and lots of deer. Seafood was

also a big deal -- cod, eels, clams, lobsters and even seals, which

were plentiful up and down the coast. There were lots of vegetables

and fruits and nuts, but they didn’t grow potatoes, sweet or

otherwise. Sugar was much too scarce to waste on sweetening

cranberries for a relish or pumpkin filling for a pie, although they

ate a lot of boiled pumpkin, and corn was dried out and stored for

grain, not eaten fresh.

The other major difference you’d notice if you invited a few

Pilgrims over on Thursday is how they ate. There were no forks at the

table. People ate with knives, spoons and their fingers. Everybody

got a big, cloth napkin -- which didn’t get washed all that often --

to pick up hot things or hold their meat while they cut it.

Your Pilgrim guests would also wonder what all those chairs were

doing around your Thanksgiving table. In those days, all the food for

a special dinner was laid out on a big serving table. People took

what they wanted, then found the nearest chair or tree stump or patch

of grass to sit on. It would strike them as very odd to see people

sitting and eating at the serving table itself.

So there you have it: the first Thanksgiving -- not quite as warm

and fuzzy as ours, but then, who would know? Do you know any

Pilgrims? Neither do I. Have a great T-Day.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].