New Mexico Political Journal

The True Story of Thanksgiving

11/28/2019

By Editor Emeritus and some-time, infrequent contributor, former State Senator Rod Adair

THE TRUE STORY of THANKSGIVING, November 28, 1621

After a harrowing, challenging year in which the total number of passengers on the Mayflower had been reduced from 102 to 53 by the numerous deaths in the terrible winter of 1620-21, the congregation (which was made up of Separatists, not Puritans) decided that a Thanksgiving celebration should be held for them and for their fellow travelers (who, in their view, may or may not have been saved Christians because they were most likely members of the Church of England).

The true Pilgrims lovingly and affectionately referred their fellow Englishmen as "strangers." (The names of all are provided below.**)

Exactly 398 years ago today at exactly 2:00 PM (EST—though it was then known locally as Wampanoag Time*) our Calvinist forebears gathered for the very first Thanksgiving Dinner with their Indian neighbors whom they had invited out of Christian charity and some concern that they were not eating properly.

(*The Wampanoag's time measurement system had been selected by a vote of surrounding tribes at a standardized time gathering in 1602, with delegates from the Narragansett, Nauset, Pocomtuc, Pennacook, Nipmuc, Mahican, and Massachuset tribes recognizing that their own systems were more primitive, and much less accurate.)

Indians Not on Time

The Indians showed up quite late, perhaps 30 minutes to an hour behind schedule. But the Pilgrims being a tolerant and non-judgmental people, carried on as if nothing had happened. Far be it from Calvinists to point out failings in others.

The Indians brought five deers (a correct rendering, as the Pilgrims were still speaking a good deal of Middle English) which they still had to dress out and prepare—an unpleasant task as we all know, which considerably delayed the proceedings even further.

But a ball was produced for the youths to pass the time—which they did. And it is from this first Thanksgiving Day ball game which we get the current tradition of football on Thanksgiving Day (largely because the 1934 owner of the Detroit Lions was a descendant of the Mayflower expedition and had long wanted to revive the tradition, which he did 85 years ago).

Beginning of the Feast

At last, when all was in readiness, a prayer of blessings was offered up—for all in attendance, including the Pilgrims as well as the assembled Strangers and Indians. And their prayers included the Anglicans and Catholics (both of whom the Pilgrims loved with all their heart, though they believed them to be lost, most likely) back home across the sea. From that prayer, emanating from these most ecumenical and forward-thinking Calvinists, we get the American tradition of religious tolerance, to be enshrined in the First Amendment only some 170 years later.

The entire crowd of 143 included the 53 surviving Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag warriors (yes, they’d only brought 5 deers with them, but of course the Pilgrims didn’t even bat an eye, didn’t whine about it — all in the Christian spirit of Thanksgiving). It was fortunate the Pilgrims had shot more than 50 geese, turkey, and ducks.

Shellfish Tradition no Longer Survives. Thanks be to God.

The record shows they also served shellfish. (NOTE: This was a “tradition” that was most fortunately abandoned later as it can result in violent vomiting caused by such things as raw oysters — resulting in a scene that could easily ruin an idyllic, Norman Rockwell setting).

The Pilgrims provided a vast array of vegetables, including onions (largely abandoned today); carrots (ditto); beans (if the chroniclers mean “green,” well, okay, but if “kidney” or “pinto,” well, largely abandoned today); pumpkins—more on that below; spinach, lettuce, cabbage, peas (all pretty much gone the way of the buffalo on T-day).

There was also corn — and this was a big deal because until a year earlier the Pilgrims had never even seen it before. It was also very weird because the English called virtually every grain “corn,” especially wheat. But when they actually were introduced to corn by the extremely famous Squanto, oddly enough he called it “maize.” (This is something the University of Michigan later, inexplicably, adopted as a “color.”) But at last the English had an actual foodstuff that linked up with a word they had been using all this time. Who knew?

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that over the course of the year the Pilgrims had produced corn syrup — and that allowed them to take the pumpkin and turn it into a pie — a concept totally unknown to the Indians. They also added spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg — which was remarkably generous since they cost approximately £1 per ounce—which in today’s currency is about $100,000.

No Potatoes, But Native Cranberries in Abundance

There were no potatoes — even though they were native to America and the Indians had tons of them — as the Pilgrims were suspicious of them. The Irish and Germanics later became enamored of them. And of course the Russians and Finns used them exclusively to produce vodka, which, as a "spirit" the Pilgrims would have condemned (though they themselves did drink barrels and barrels of beer). It is noted that so much Vodka is consumed in Finland and Russian today that its usage as actual food is of course virtually unheard of.

As for fruit, the Pilgrims did use the locally-found, brand new (to them) cranberry, confecting a sauce for the turkey. This led to an outcry from both the Indians and English alike about the “tartness,” which was agreed by all to be a problem. This, in turn, caused a massive demand for the importation of sugar — thus the beginnings of British plantations in the West Indies and an industry and sweet tooth that afflicts millions of Americans to this day with its accompanying obesity and derivative illnesses.

Pilgrim Tolerance

In any case, it was a successful meal, lasting some five hours into the night, the Indians famously being overcome with the effects of tryptophan, and becoming increasingly listless and drowsy, finally falling asleep to a man. But the Pilgrims were careful to cover them with blankets (after all it was Massachusetts in late November) and to not touch their arms at all.

This same schedule and the same sequence occurred for three consecutive days.

This kind of openly demonstrated trust and humanity touched the hearts of both the Indians and Pilgrims alike and ushered in nearly 400 years of peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between settlers and the native peoples of the First Nations — only to finally be marred in very recent times by demonstrations and clashes in North Dakota over a proposed pipeline.

Thus occurred the very First Thanksgiving, November 28, 1621. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may God bless us, everyone!

** FAMILY GROUPS REMAINING ALIVE for the FIRST THANKSGIVING:

(On the voyage over, there had been 28 adults, 16 children, for a total of 44 True Pilgrims.)

THE CONGREGATION REMAINING: 21 True Pilgrims, plus 3 servants/wards (most likely not congregants)

ALLERTON: Isaac with children Bartholomew, Mary, Remember; and the Allerton servant William Latham • BRADFORD: William • BREWSTER: William & Mary with sons Love, and Wrestling; and their ward Richard More • CHILTON: Mary (13) • COOKE: Francis with son John • CRACKSTON: John (18) • FULLER: Samuel with nephew Samuel 2d • ROGERS: Joseph (17) • TILLEY: Elizabeth (15) • WINSLOW: Edward & Susanna with her sons Resolved White & Peregrine White; Winslow servant George Soule

STRANGERS REMAINING

Strangers: 23, plus 7 servants/wards

ALDEN: John • BILLINGTON: John & Eleanor with sons Francis and John Jr. • BROWNE Peter • CARVER: The Carver ward Desire Minter; the Carver servant John Howland; the Carver maidservant Dorothy. • EATON: Francis with son Samuel • ELY: Unknown adult man • GARDINER: Richard • GOODMAN: John • HOPKINS: Stephen & Elizabeth with Giles, Constance, Damaris, Oceanus; their servants Edward Doty and Edward Leister. • MULLINS: Priscilla • STANDISH: Myles • TILLEY: Tilley wards Humility Cooper and Henry Samson • TREVOR: William • WARREN: Richard • WINSLOW: Gilbert

EDWARD & SUSANNA WHITE:

An Object Lesson in Today's "Gay Marriage" Debate—Make it a Civil Ceremony

(Also, the following true story provides a history lesson which can be instructive to both libertarians and conservatives alike with regard to the considerable mess which has ensued in the wake of the so-called "Gay Marriage" uproar.)

Listed above among the true Pilgrims are the Winslow family, Edward & Susanna with her sons Resolved White and Peregrine White as having survived the first year. (Susanna, by the way, was one of only four adult women to have survived.)

Susanna's first husband, William White, had died almost exactly nine months earlier and Elizabeth Winslow, Edward's first wife, had died almost exactly eight months earlier, on February 21 and March 24, 1621, respectively. The surviving spouses Edward and Susanna then experienced something of a whirlwind romance (perhaps suitable for a fairly racy HBO Miniseries), somehow fell in love, and ended up marrying on May 12, 1621, 49 days and 81 days after the deaths of their spouses.

(The congregants, naturally, wanted to be able to help the newlyweds off on a two-week honeymoon — perhaps to the Caribbean, or a ski vacation in Vermont — but neither had been invented yet, plus no one had any money or transport. So, by all accounts they honeymooned right on site.)

HOW WAS THIS MARRIAGE POSSIBLE?

You may be thinking this was practically impossible because of the requirement of the reading of the Banns (for three consecutive Sundays) in front of the congregation as well as the publication of the same in the marketplace or local municipality.

However, keep in mind that the Pilgrims at Plymouth were "Separatists" unlike those arriving in the follow-on landings within the next decade at present-day Boston, which was t be established about 40 miles to the north.

The newer arrivals were "Puritans," technically still affiliated with the Church of England, with hopes of finishing off its purification by eliminating the last of its more ghastly Romish habits.* (Pilgrims held out no such hope.)

The Pilgrims, therefore, viewed marriage as strictly a legal contract in the civil realm rather than a religious rite. This is because Puritans and other Protestants saw no biblical foundation for church control over marriage. Marriage was only established as a sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church in the 12th century, and Separatists viewed that phenomenon as a vain and un-biblical invention. So the marriage ceremony was performed by Governor William Bradford.
________________________________________
* It must be noted that when royal government control was firmly asserted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630), marriage came under the purview of the state church (Anglican). This may be seen by libertarians and conservatives alike as a classic example of how the entanglement of church and state leads to coercion in the area of religious belief.

For the Pilgrims, because marriage was a civil contract, questions of inheritance were handled by the state rather than the Church. Edward Winslow who became a prominent leader within the colony, later paid the price for his civil marriage when he was thrown into a Fleet Street prison in London for 17 weeks for not following the church/state law.

** Plenary NOTE: While much of this account was true, it must be said that there is some embellishment, strictly for the purposes of adding color to the story. But any and all additions are well within the standards adopted by Hollywood when a movie provides the opening statement: "Based on a True Story." For example, all the embellishments are just as true as virtually anything contained in any Oliver Stone production, but also as true as the work of many other directors/producers, including those who have labeled their finished products "documentaries."

Email us (at nmpj@dfn.com) with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas.

Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

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Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did." — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official. Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration. The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally.

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally. And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that. What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it." They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented. It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status. Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course. It is not morally or legally correct. A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time. Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson. He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue. If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him. We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport.

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally. No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is. The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way.

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport.

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not. This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule. On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off. Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent. NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day. Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games. Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days. For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

Getting to the Playoffs: It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort. Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason. While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint. NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games. The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game. The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day. In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

The Postseason Playoffs: Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season. Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off. For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks. At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League:

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on. Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off. But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

The National Basketball Association

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends.

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself. In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so.

Not so in baseball. They are two entirely different concepts. Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level. But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster. MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL. Teams have enormous numbers of days off.

Here's the key point: No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs. None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day. There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers. Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days. The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest. But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4. This never happens in the regular season. Even the All-Star break is only three days. Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month.

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs. (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.)

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs. Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members.

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers? In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines? Would an NBA team use only the starting five? They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall. No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them? Baseball has travel days constantly. A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day. Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days. Why? Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter. The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days. The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.

*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.

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The True Story of Thanksgiving

By Editor Emeritus and some-time, infrequent contributor, former State Senator Rod Adair

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