Thanksgiving is … a day for stopping, really stopping, and saying prayers of thanks. That is what the first to host a harvest with the Indians did, Popham Colony in Maine, 1607. That is also what the Pilgrims did at Plymouth in 1621. They did that again in 1623. What we should do today.
These days, we rush along, don’t we? Admit it, we have too much to do, too much worry, Christmas soon, then New Year’s, and before you know it – this year – an inauguration. Right?
But when do you stop, close out the rush and noise, sit or kneel or lie alone, and just say “Thank you, Lord, for remembering small me, just one of your many grateful servants, thank you.”
When do we stop the merry-go-round, turn off phones, computers, televisions, alarms, and obligations, lists, and must-dos, sit quietly, look out a window or into darkness, say “thank you.”
In 1607, 1621, and for centuries after, there were no guarantees of anything, no reliable heat in winter, no insulated houses, coats, shoes, or gloves. There was no electricity, no antibiotics, no light at night, no escaping weather that made food rot, hard to find, harder to keep, and no easy sleep.
Early Americans faced diseases we no longer think about, typhoid, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, polio, measles, and other mysteries; they recalled the Black Death and many lost children.
Winding the clock ahead, how many of us can even imagine a world without electricity, electric heat, no cars, planes above, power stoves or tools, no AC, public schools, no buses, subways, trains, or bicycles, not even harnessed horses.
Imagine no medicine to treat a cold, itch, rash, virus, broken leg, sore hip, headache, heartache, no mood enhancer, no answers for cancer; no way to stop a staph infection, pneumonia, diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, stroke, heart attack, TB, diseases common or rare – only prayer.
Looking around, the pilgrims would be shocked, and more so by our unknowing and our lack of appreciation for what they did not have, and no gratitude for our easy lives. Even our founders could not imagine the Internet, handheld phones, rockets, medicines, and automatic everything.
But here we sit, stand, drive, or fly, in so many ways taking for granted all we have, letting time hurry by, hardly thinking about what they did, got through, and how they kept one another alive.
Actually, that is only half the story, their helping of each other. They kept each other alive, but also laid their souls bare put faith in God and prayer. They did not think they could change the world, act as Creator, or makeover what God had made; they acted with humility.
In 1623, two years after that famous Plymouth Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims struggled, with no idea about George Washington and future leaders. That year, they suffered a terrible drought, almost did not make it, were desperate, largely alone.
William Bradford recorded how hard life was and how close they were to extinction. They had lost so many, and could count on nothing except their God. Facing starvation, he wrote, they “set apart a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress.”
Yes, that first Thanksgiving in 1621 had been heartwarming and offered solace for weariness. It had provided vital hope, but this one – two years on – was about survival. Forty-five of their 102 on the Mayflower had died the first year; in 1623, they feared all would perish.
The drought threatened cascading weakness, inability to work, disease, and radiating death. Peace was afoot with the Indians, but survival was on the Pilgrims and their God. So, they prayed.
Bradford and the Pilgrims, like our Republic’s Founders, put all their proverbial eggs in one basket. As their crops withered, they asked God for mercy. Weeks passed, and then Bradford gathered all the Pilgrims to pray in one long “day of humiliation … humble and fervent prayer.”
This was not the first Thanksgiving, but the third. This was not the year we celebrate, but 1623, the year that puts an exclamation point on Thanksgiving. Wrote Bradford that night – against all odds, it began “to rain with such sweet and gentle showers as gave … cause of rejoicing and blessing God… for which mercy in time convenient, and they also set aside a day of Thanksgiving.”
So, yes, let us celebrate 1607 in Maine, and 1621 at Plymouth, but also 1623’s Thanksgiving, when they put their hope in a loving God who did not disappoint. And then, yes, let us give thanks for the rain of 2024, miracles we only dared conceive, what happens when we believe.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
