It’s not even what I write about. Yes, I write historical fiction, but I’m usually fixated on either 1800’s America or 1200’s European-type fantasy world. Three years ago, when PTO President Pam contacted me because she saw on my website that I did storytelling, I agreed to storytell the Mayflower Pilgrim survival tale to her kindergarteners. Of course, I needed a costume, so bought the basic black shirt and long skirt, and then hand-sewed the white parts, just to see how long it may have taken a 1600’s woman to do the same. (Twenty-seven hours, BTW.) I’ve presented the Pilgrim bit to eighteen classes, and have enough information, with props, to keep 5-year-olds entertained for more than an hour, although it’s usually for either twenty- or thirty-minute time periods.

I show-and-tell props. Talk food. Stress the no-electricity bit. And I have four volunteers help me with a Pilgrim skit. Yep. All done in twenty minutes.

I also don’t keep the uglies back, like the fact that when they were starving that first winter, the Mayflower Pilgrims found sand mounds nearby with baskets of buried corn, and took them for themselves. (They later “paid” the Indians for it, but part of me cringes at that. What would you accept as pay back for someone taking your winter supply of food which you’d planted, weeded and watered for months, and then harvested and stored into baskets you’d made by hand?)

There’s also the fact that about half of the passengers and crew of the Mayflower died that first winter.

And what about twice-kidnapped Squanto, forced into European slavery, once escaped, once set free? Since he knew how to speak English from his years of captivity in England, he was the perfect translator for the lost Pilgrims who’d intended to land and live at the already established English colony of Jamestown. Squanto taught them how to plant corn the Indian way, and how to communicate with the people, how to survive.

After the successful harvest the following fall, when the Pilgrims invited their Indian friends for a meal to celebrate, they didn’t realize that ninety men would walk two days to come. Normally, just a handful of Indians checked in on the newcomers. The Thanksgiving Natives ended up, after their two-day walk to the invitation, having to build their own shelters, and even shoot four deer, to provide enough food for the feast. Oh, and there’s also the fact that the four adult English women did all the cooking.

BTW, John Bradford did not list turkey or potatoes in that first shared Thanksgiving at Plymouth, nor marshmallow-topped candied yams. We know they ate venison and corn, of course, as well as duck and shellfish, squash and beans.

What does/will your present Thanksgiving meal look like? Have you invited friends to eat with you who have helped you this past year? Are you thankful to God that you have survived for yet another season?

Wishing each of you food and friends and life at this Thanksgiving remembrance time.