Reclaiming Thanksgiving

As we all make plans for Thanksgiving, I want to put some food for thought on your table. As you probably know, what we consider to be the first Thanksgiving occurred round about 1621 as the newly arrived pilgrims sat down with some Wampanoag Indians for a feast to celebrate a plentiful harvest. For the record, this harvest celebration was not new but has equivalents in cultures around the world stretching back to the limits of recorded time, but, at any rate, the menu on that festive New England day likely included, cod, eel, swan, partridge, eagles, seal, flour, Indian corn, chestnuts, acorns, radishes, plums, dried currants, parsnips and of course, wild turkey. Notably, that menu did not include such thanksgiving staples as: ham, sweet potatoes - or not sweet potatoes - pumpkin pie, milk, eggs, and, believe it or not, cranberry sauce. They had cranberries, but no sugar.

Interesting as that was, my point is, they had what was local. They celebrated what was produced in their neck of the woods so to speak. In fact all the harvest festivals of all the people going back to the beginning of time did the same thing. Because that is all there was.

Now, in modern times a number of technological advancements help us, not just by adding sugar to the cranberries - and thank God for that - but by making it possible for us to have anything, from anywhere on our tables, and not just after the harvest but anytime. Fertilizers and irrigation make bad soil farmable, pesticides and herbicides increase yields, and preservatives and refrigeration make food last forever - think frozen peas and spam. And while I'm not knocking having it all, all the time, the fact of the matter is, if we keep doing what we are doing, the harvest festival is an endangered species - and so are we.