"The First Thanksgiving" by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris (American Painter)
My girls and I have just finished reading our cornucopia of Thanksgiving literature. Picture books and short chapter books are scattered on the sofa and coffee table. I softly finger the pages of our recent selection, Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving by Joseph Bruchac and Greg Shed. It’s a great, thought-provoking book, even if I can’t pronounce most of the Indian names and tribes. It’s a picture book that is better read with an upper elementary and junior high level student.
Next to me the first grader is interested in all things primary:
“Where are the Indians today, Mommy?” looking at the pictures.
“I want to have the same thing on our Thanksgiving table, Mommy,” pointing with cinnamon-y fingers at the picture of the first feast.
“There’s a deer like Corey caught, Mommy. We eat deer?” licking the cinnamon-y fingers with a face devoid of all sweet thoughts.
On the other side of me the melancholy fifth grader’s brow is furrowed with a more serious train of thought:
“Do you think the Indians still hate us, Momma?”
I am reading the author’s note silently because my younger girls don’t care for the higher education the author’s note affords the reader. It’s interesting and I share the final paragraph with the girls to show them the “realness” of the story that the author too stood where Squanto stood and looked out across the same ocean and smelt the same food cooking over open fires.
Like my fifth grader, I am also thinking of the plight of the Indians and what the white man brought to their shores. I’m also thinking about the differences between Squanto and another influential Indian, Epanow. Both were captured and brought to Spain and England as slaves. Both found their way back to their homeland. Both found their families forever lost due to village raids and illness brought to the shores by the white man. Squanto, along with his friend Samoset, forgave the English people and sought to befriend them, learn from them, teach them, and share the land. Epanow never forgave the white man and vowed forever to hate the people who had taken his freedom, his home, and his family.
"First Thanksgiving in America" by Unknown Artist
I sip my coffee slowly, thoughtfully. I’m also thinking of forgiveness, which is the true seed that grows thankful hearts. Would I have been as forgiving as Squanto? Or as revengeful as Epanow? I think of the men like John Smith and Thomas Dermer who offered the hand of friendship, honor, and trustfulness to the Indians. I think of the good deeds the Indians did for the Pilgrims.
I flip to the page of the Friar walking with Squanto and we discuss how Christianity came to the New World because of the holy missionary priests who came to show and teach by example (because the language barrier exceeded things of the spiritual nature).
We talk about the evils of revenge and the fruits of forgiveness. And I ponder to myself why some people are so receptive to this message and why others are not.
Even today we are faced with a backlash of distrust and revenge. There is still a threat-filled cry that one group of people is more patriotic, more religious, more productive, more powerful than another. And we fight. Amongst ourselves.
How do some, like Squanto, loose everything they have yet still have the supernatural power to forgive and reconcile and draw people together for the greater good? How are they able to embrace the message of the Christian faith while those around them mock it and attempt to destroy their beliefs?
The Thanksgiving feast shows us how. The picture we see this holiday of Indians and Pilgrims (Squanto and Samoset among them) feasting together is a brief, yet powerful, image of what God wants His world to look like. That Thanksgiving image is what our world can look like if people forgive as Christ forgave, serve as Christ served, pray as Christ prayed, and plant seeds of kindness in the hearts of men as Christ did.
But, you reason, the image of the first Thanksgiving feast, the presence and prospect of peace and unity, are merely images of what we desire yet can never have in this life. It’s a utopia; a mirage.
If we believe this, we are missing a major point: the point of living in the here and now, of being united in the Christian faith, and of knowing that God forgave us first. The Thanksgiving feast was a small piece of the whole picture of these faithful people. Their lives were hard and full of disappointment and sickness and pain. They knew forgiveness well. They knew that you can not waste a minute of forgiveness and still be thankful. For three days and nights a merry band of friends, white skins and dark skins, paused long enough to live in the moment. They united to celebrate their freedom, their home, their belonging to a community, their servitude to one another and to a God far greater than they. Under a tent of autumn colors and blue sky, they thanked God for their freedom to worship "the Creator of All Things".
Like them we won’t see our own utopia picture in this lifetime but we can paint our own small miniature to hang in our children’s memories. We set the stage in our own homes and churches and communities and gather our family and friends together as the players.
“For where two or more are gathered in My name…” (Matthew 18:20)
"The First Thanksgiving" by Jennie A. Brownscombe
The image we have, of Pilgrims and Indians feasting and celebrating and worshipping together, reminds us that peace is within our grasp. It is found in extending our own hand in friendship, honor, and trustfulness to the ones nearest to us, to the ones who seem different from ourselves.
The message of this Thanksgiving holiday is as much in the forgiveness as it is in the thankfulness.
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