[rollei_list] Re: USian Thanksgiving

At 12:58 PM 11/27/2008, Austin Franklin wrote:
>
>> This was a practice first started
>> at Berkeley Plantation on the James River in
>> Virginia in 1619 and later repeated by the
>> Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1625.
>
>There certainly were other celebrations prior to the one by the Pilgrims in
>MA in 1621 (not 1625), but I don't believe it's an established fact that the
>Berkeley "celebration" was the origin of the American traditional
>"Thanksgiving", nor that the Plymouth one in 1621 was a "repeat" of the
>Berkeley celebration.  I believe the one by the Pilgrims in 1621 is still
>the established origin of the American traditional Thanksgiving.
Heretic! I live about thirty-five miles (7,864 joules, for those addicted to the metric system) from Berkeley Plantation and five miles from Henricus City, which also hosted a 1619 Thanksgiving. If I ever repeated what you said, I'd be hung in effigy (a small town just outside of Iowa City, Iowa, for that matter).
Down in these hustings, it is taken as a given that the Massachusettians (only a minority of which, incidentally, were "Pilgrims") were johnny-come-lately copy-cats. When I lived in Connecticut, you'd get yourself beaten up for even mentioning the Berkeley Plantation event -- I know, as it happened to me in Fourth Grade. 

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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