Daily Verse | 1 Corinthians 2:2
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Wednesday’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 5-8

It’s Wednesday and thanks for joining me for today’s Daily Broadside. I’m finding that eating a clock is very time-consuming.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. The holiday is based on the fact that the Pilgrims held a three-day festival sometime between late September and early November, 1621. The festival was to celebrate their first harvest, having arrived a year earlier and enduring a brutal winter, then being saved from starvation by Squanto, an English-speaking Indian who taught the Pilgrims how to plant and fish.

Of the 102 passengers who made the crossing from Europe, only 53 survived to celebrate in the fall of 1621. We know about that celebration from two colonists who wrote personal accounts of the feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The first is from William Bradford, the governor, who wrote in his book, Of Plymouth Plantation,

“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). 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 the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.”

The second is from Edward Winslow writing in Mourt’s Relation,

“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 fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. 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 we 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 the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”

So the feast was held to celebrate their good fortune and to specifically thank God for his bountiful provision of their very first harvest in the New World.

These days Thanksgiving is mostly a secular holiday that is all about the fixings, like turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and football. Those of us who have faith in God will try to make a meaningful connection between that first Thanksgiving and our own modern-day feast, which may or may not reflect a “so plentiful” harvest. Nonetheless, we are grateful and thankful for the provision that God does make in our lives.

This year is a milestone year to celebrate the first Thanksgiving — 400 years ago. This would be a good year to share the story of the first Thanksgiving with your family and to be thankful for what you have in a similar way. Here’s a couple of good sites to use for the background:

History of Massachusetts: History of the First Thanksgiving
The True Story of That First Thanksgiving

Happy 400th Anniversary!