OT A Moveable Fast
Matthew Kruk
Op-Ed Contributor
A Moveable Fast
By ELYSSA EAST
"IT'S Thanksgiving - time to put our feedbags on," my family likes to
say as we elbow for room next to the Pilgrim and Puritan ghosts the
holiday summons to our table. Our colonial forebears probably would not
disapprove of our having second and third helpings of sweet potatoes and
stuffing, or even rushing off to watch football after the meal - the
Pilgrims themselves played lots of games at that first Thanksgiving in
1621. But I imagine they would find fault with our binge for another
reason: it is not accompanied by a fast.
To the Pilgrims and Puritans, the community-wide fast, or "day of public
humiliation and prayer," and the thanksgiving feast, or day of "public
thanksgiving and praise," were equal halves of the same ritual. But the
fast was not merely a justification for a community-wide gorging. Both
customs were important components of a religious rite that served to
pacify an angry God who was believed to punish entire communities for
the sins of the few with starvation, "excessive rains from the bottles
of heaven," epidemics, crop infestations, the Indian wars and other
hardships.
According to the 19th-century historian William DeLoss Love, the New
England colonies celebrated as many as nine such "special public days" a
year from 1620 to 1700. And as the Puritans were masters of self-denial,
days of abstention outnumbered thanksgivings two to one. Fasting, Cotton
Mather wrote, "kept the wheel of prayer in continual motion."
Pleas for rain during spells of drought were the most common reason for
fasting. But Puritans also fasted whenever a comet, an evil portent,
appeared in the sky; at the start of the Salem witch trials; and
throughout the various colonial Indian wars (Mather preached that the
horrors in King Philip's War, against the Wampanoag Indians, had been
sent by God to chastise colonists for the sin of wig wearing).
Thanksgivings were celebrated at the end of these and other hardships
and in honor of such auspicious events as the "dissipation of the
pirates," the succession of English kings and safe ocean crossings of
ships bearing colonists and much needed supplies. Yet these feasts all
began with fasts and hours of prayer, during which ministers praised God's
goodness and railed against the sin of gluttony. (Once, after eating too
much, John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, fretted
that his flesh had "waxed wanton" and begged God to "revive" him.)
Intemperance was believed to go against the very idea of gratitude. Of
course, people did often overindulge at these thanksgivings. But then
additional fast days often immediately followed.
Puritans believed that expressions of thanks to God for their good
fortune helped keep his future punishments at bay - a point that does
not detract from the genuine appreciation they felt at privations' end.
Nonetheless, participation was mandatory. In 1696, William Veazie of
Boston was pilloried for plowing on Thanksgiving Day.
It was in the late 1660s that the New England colonies began holding an
"Annual Provincial Thanksgiving." The holiday we celebrate today is a
remnant of this harvest feast, which was theologically counterbalanced
by an annual spring fast around the time of planting to ask God's good
favor for the year. Yet fasting and praying also immediately preceded
the harvest Thanksgiving. In 1690, in Massachusetts the feast itself was
postponed, though not the fasting, out of extraordinary concern that the
meal would inspire too much "carnal confidence."
As life in the New World wilderness got easier, the New England colonies
gradually began holding only their annual spring fast and fall harvest
feast. Even after Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national
holiday in 1863, Massachusetts continued to celebrate its spring day of
abstention for 31 more years.
In the nearly 400 years since the first Thanksgiving, the holiday has
come to mirror our transformation into a nation of gross
overconsumption, but the New England colonists never intended for
Thanksgiving to be a day of gluttony. They dished up restraint along
with gratitude as a shared main course. What mattered most was not the
feast itself, but the gathering together in thanks and praise for life's
most humble gifts. Perhaps this holiday season we could benefit from
restoring a proper Thanksgiving balance between forbearance and
indulgence.
Elyssa East is the author of the forthcoming "Dogtown: Death and
Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town."
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Brad Ferguson
Matthew Kruk <nob...@home.com> wrote:
> In the nearly 400 years since the first Thanksgiving, the holiday has
> come to mirror our transformation into a nation of gross
> overconsumption, but the New England colonists never intended for
> Thanksgiving to be a day of gluttony. They dished up restraint along
> with gratitude as a shared main course. What mattered most was not the
> feast itself, but the gathering together in thanks and praise for life's
> most humble gifts. Perhaps this holiday season we could benefit from
> restoring a proper Thanksgiving balance between forbearance and
> indulgence.
And maybe we could go a little bit easier on the gasbaggery while we're
at it.
Thanksgiving is not a "day of gluttony." It's a feast day. Other
cultures have plenty of them, and they all run pretty much along the
same lines. The reason we dropped the fasting and public-humiliation
bits is because they sucked big green donkey dick. Hope that's clear
now.
Kathi
wrote:
>November 24, 2009
>Op-Ed Contributor
>A Moveable Fast
>By ELYSSA EAST
>
>"IT'S Thanksgiving - time to put our feedbags on," my family likes to
>say as we elbow for room next to the Pilgrim and Puritan ghosts the
>holiday summons to our table. Our colonial forebears probably would not
>disapprove of our having second and third helpings of sweet potatoes and
>stuffing, or even rushing off to watch football after the meal - the
>Pilgrims themselves played lots of games at that first Thanksgiving in
>1621.
GO LIONS
MIRACLES HAPPEN
Kathi