Thanksgiving is right around the corner and the annual scramble to supermarkets for turkeys, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling has been celebrated in late November for generations. Richard Pickering, Deputy Executive Director, Plimoth Patuxet Museums and Chief Historian joins us live from Plymouth, Massachusetts with the dramatic story of how the American holiday got started.
Richard Pickering shared how the English colonists and Wampanoag Native Peoples forged peace agreements which led to the first Thanksgiving celebration, much different from the way we celebrate America’s national holiday today.
Today’s Thanksgiving symbolizes what happened in Plymouth 400 years ago in the autumn of 1621. Four hundred and one years later Plymouth marks the start of the holiday with the USA Thanksgiving Parade, kicking off the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is an opportunity for all Americans to stop and consider the neighborliness, the good will, and gratitude for their families and friends. When sachem (chief) Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe and his ninety men shared a three-day harvest festival with 52 Mayflower passengers, they shared each other’s culture, danced, and exchanged gifts of food.
The Pilgrims and Massasoit’s Pokanoket people came together – fragile communities reaching toward one another after great hardships. Community, conflict, collaboration, leadership, faith, self-government,gratitude are ideas as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.
For more information go to SeePlymouth.com
