The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-11-24

THANKSGIVING DAY.


The festival of Thanksgiving comes from
New England in but limited sense. 1t
was q local, or rather sectional holiday in
New England. which up to fifty years ago
did not make much of either Christmas or
the New Year, the ancient Puritan deem
ing both these festivals as instinct with
the gross conviviality and gluttony that
was permitted, if not encouraged, by the
English church, from which the Pilgrims
fed and against which the ascetic Crom-
wellian Puritan rebelled. The Dutch
made much of the New Year festival, and
the English, who succeeded them in the
government of New York city, M de much
Of Christmas, so that the colonial New
Yorker was a social, registering, horse
racing, mercurial creature compared with
the New Englandcr. New York was from
its early history given to public balls and
parties and merrymakings that were alb
horred and unknown in New England.
The first New England Thanksgiving
began in the Plymouth colony, and seems
to have been G rude but exceptionally
genial feast, OF which both Gov. Bradford
and the Indian sachem Massasoit partook.
The Indians furnished plenty Of game for
the dinner, and Gov. Bradford furnished
plenty OF strong waters; the young men
shot at a mark, and both Christian and
savage had "a good time" for the time
had not vet come when
The sachem learned the rule hs taught to ktth
and kin,
Run from the white man when you find he
smells of Holland gin.
The founders of the Plymouth colony
were without exception a genial band of
cheerful Christians, totally unlike the fierce
sectaries, the CromwellIan Puritans, who
nodded the manners and framed the stern,
narrow, intolerant, brutal policy of the
colony of Massachusetts bay. The Endi-
colt type of Puritan hung witches, and
Quakers, prosecuted Catholics and governed
generally in both church and state with
harsh and despotic hand. The Pilgrim
founders Of the Plymouth colony mad not
had their tempers embittered by civil war
and the cruel persecution by Laud that
preceded it; they had resided for num-
Der of years in Holland. whose people have
always been Of a social, cheerful habit; the
Pilgrims were ''Separatists." not Puritans
of the Cromwellian "Independent" type,
and the literary remains of Robinson ;,
Carver, Bradford and Winslow prove that
the Pilgrims of the Plymouth col
ony and the Buritans of the
Massachusetts bay colony were as far
apart in the spirit of Christian sweetness,
tolerance, cheerfulness. justice, mercy;
in brief, in humane reverence for the uni
versal fatherhood of God and the brother
hood of man, as Jonathan Edwards was
distant from Emerson, Lowell, Hawthorne,
Holmes and Whittier.
The Pilgrims doubtless celebrated their
first Thanksgiving very much in the
modern spirit, and Holmes did not violate
the historic truth when he represented
Miles Standish stirring the posset in the
punch bowl with his sword:
And one by one the nlusketeers-the men that
fought and prayed
All drank I were their mothers milk, and
not man afraid.
IT'S but the fool that loves excess; hast thou
drunken soul,
The bane is in thy shallow skull; not in my
silver bowl.
The genial side of New England charac-
ter that contrasts so strongly with its
harsher and more unlovely traits is due to
the influence of that fine strain of spirit
uai sweetness and intellectual refinement
that was contributed 10 New England by
the brave Plymouth colony that under the
Il -.
the first New England Thanksgiving.
The New England Thanksgiving days that
were appointed later in the history OF the
Massachusetts, bay colony were probably
not scenes of large and free festivity; they
were solemnly celebrated with church
ceremonies. followed by cold dinners eaten
with grim and austerc gravity of de-
neanor Saving in spots where the genial
influence of the Pilgrim founders of the
Plymouth colony prevailed, the social life
OF New England, Sunday or week day,
fast day or Thanksgiving, was dull
round of hard, gloomy existence, that
while It nourished some sterling. manly
virtues. certainly cultivated many SER
ious. deep-seated vices of character ana
conduct.
Mr.. Charles Francis Adams in his recent
history Of New England shows from docu-
mentary testimony of the letters and
diaries of his ggest-grandfather that the
only thing in which the colonial New
Englanders were our superiors was their
tlial piety. Life was so monotonous with
ont books, newspapers. mails or travellers
that the average New Highlander was in
temperate. because he WAS driven TO the
tavern in search Of warmth, comfort and
conversation that would save him from
social starv alton. Mr.. Adams says:
There, gathered around about tire great fire ia
tie harroO:n, would be a half dozen OF moro
rough, slncwy Yankees, smoking their pipes,
drinking Zip, and talking politics. The room
might b. dirty. the laugusg0 coarse, the air foul
with tobacco. ard scenes oI drankenoess might
occur but here was az escape from :eifuu, and
a natural craving Tor society and excite
nsnt was gratihet. 1t tie one form
Of socsability opened 70 the average New
Highlander through the long, com .ortless
winter hours 81 enforced ;4leuesS with
mo tavern the circle would Re COM
nete unless the stranger also s,opped "a; the VIII
,sxe store There, again. he would tad the &C.