Welcome to my blog, “The British Are Coming, Y’all!” From 17–27 November, I’m participating with several hundred other bloggers in the “Gratitude Giveaways Hop,” accessed by clicking on the logo on the left. All blogs in this hop offer reader-appreciation giveaways, and we’re all linked, so you can easily hop from one giveaway to another. But here on my blog, I’m posting essays from Relevant History author guests on the theme of gratitude and thanksgiving. We’ll give away books and gifts during the eleven days, to show appreciation for our readers. To find out how to qualify for the giveaways on my blog, read through each day’s Relevant History post below and follow the directions. Then click on the Gratitude Hop logo so you can move along to another blog. Enjoy!
Relevant History welcomes back M. E. Kemp, who writes a historical mystery series featuring two nosy Puritans as detectives. She lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. For more information, check her web site.
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Ninety years after the Pilgrim’s Feast of Thanksgiving, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony still celebrated the holiday—only it might be in July or in May or in January, depending upon what occasion for which to be thankful. That might be for the end of King Phillip’s War or the arrival of a sloop bearing kegs of molasses.
And Thanksgiving didn’t originate with the Pilgrims, either, but with celebrations for various causes by the Church of England. In fact, Guy Fawkes Day was a much more celebrated occasion on November 5th, the day Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament. In Boston it became a rowdy holiday with the North End rivaling the South End, both Ends parading around the streets carrying a “Guy,” a straw dummy until they finally met up and ended in a huge brawl and a bonfire. (Note from Suzanne Adair: Check out a picture of the “Guy” as well as my account of the Guy Fawkes celebration 5 November 2011 at the annual Battle of Camden reenactment.)
When the Puritans did decide it was time for a thanksgiving, it was a veritable feast with turkey, to be sure, but also with beef, venison, all kinds of waterfowl, ham, shellfish and other bounties of the sea. (I confess I’m envious of those days when six-foot lobsters washed up on the beaches after a storm. Lobster was so plentiful it was considered a trash-fish. Now, that’s the kind of trash food I could go for!) Pumpkins and apples played a large part in the feast, in forms besides pies. Both foods were dried for use over the winter.
And there was drink—lots of hard liquor! Our ancestors were lushes. Beer and hard cider were everyday drinks, with wine, brandy and rum; rum-punches being a favorite of gatherings. Even the ministers imbibed ungodly amounts of liquor at their ordination dinners. They welcomed new ministers into the fold with every kind of liquor available. Tavern bills show this to be the case. Of course, you were expected to hold your drink. Drunkenness was fined, preached against from the pulpit, and perhaps even meant a spell in jail. Our ancestors must have had stomachs of iron. We can ourselves give thanks that we don’t have to drink concoctions like “Sparke’s Special,” which consisted of beer, rum, molasses and breadcrumbs. Yuck! Yet if you survived the diseases of childhood, barring accident, you lived to a ripe old age. Well, you were probably well-preserved by all that liquor!
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A big thanks to M. E. Kemp. She’ll give away a book cover pin to someone who contributes a legitimate comment on my blog today or tomorrow. Make sure you provide your email address. I’ll choose the winner in a drawing from among those who comment on this post by Wednesday 23 November at 6 p.m. ET, then publish the name of the winner on my blog 28 November. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.
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Six-foot long lobsters? Sounds a bit like a 1950s-era B-grade science fiction movie.
But heavens, who needs a turkey when you have three feet of lobster tail? And I wonder what price that three-foot lobster tail would fetch in today’s market?
Drinking hard liquor perhaps could be marked down to the dangers of drinking water in those times with little apparent thought to protection of water supplies.
Right-o, Liz. [slipping on my white lab coat for a moment] Microorganisms were discovered in the 1670s, but people didn’t realize that those little spheres, rods, spirals, and squiggles were the causal agents of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery. They also didn’t know that boiling water to make beverages got rid of the vast majority of nasty beasties. All they knew was that they didn’t get sick from drinking coffee, tea or spirits, but the water supply was iffy.
I’d love to take the Tardis back in time to one of our Pilgrim’s feasts! My diabetes be darned! I will imbibe all the liquor, sweet potato and apple pies and all the other trimmings with abandon! LOL. Seriously, thanks for a great glimpse into Thanksgiving with our Pilgrim founders. I’ve got the first book in the series near my “TBR” pile. I would love to win one of your cover pins. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Patty G. Henderson
Patty, am I tempting dozens of readers into joie de gluttony?
Suzanne & Liz — Sure, alcohol is dangerous but what an excuse to drink it!
Patty G. H. – All that food and drink — sounds like my own dinner on Thursday! I try to honor my Puritan ancestors by swilling everything down. I draw the line at Sparks Special, with its rum, beer, molasses and bread crumbs, though.