Bradford’s account of the early years of the settlement, and “Mourt’s Relation,” written by Edward Winslow, another early settler, with help, it is thought, from Bradford. The two reports describe a brief season of plenty and three days of feasting following the first year of settlement, during which more than half of the 99 pilgrims who had boarded the Mayflower at Plymouth, England, died.
But the word that is used to characterize the gathering in Winslow’s account is not “thanksgiving,” but “celebration.” Would the Pilgrims have called it a thanksgiving, a form of prayer codified in both the Jewish Talmud and the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer? asks Nick Bunker, author of “Making Haste from Babylon,” a 2011 history of the Mayflower Pilgrims. “Or was it more like what the native Wampanoag would have termed a nikkomo,” he asks, “a ritual feast or dance held to avert drought or sickness, to celebrate good fortune or bring victory in war?”
Our own idea of Thanksgiving Day is an amalgam of both senses of that 1621 gathering, which today occupies a special place on the American calendar as a mostly nonsectarian, noncommercial holiday that brings families and strangers together for food and fellowship, but also for thanksgiving and expressions of gratitude. This is also a time of remembrance, a time to recall the struggles of New England’s first settlers—both European and Native American—and to meditate on the circumstances that brought our own families to these shores. Whether motivated by religion, politics, or a simple desire for a better life, whether they came here willingly or in bondage, whether our ancestors arrived recently or were among the first to settle here, it can be said that we are all the sons and daughters of migrants, who built for us a better, a safer, and a freer life.
Note: A longer version of this editorial, “Thanksgiving, then and now,” appeared in the Nov. 25, 2015, Harvard Press.
