It’s a known fact that some people think of the Pilgrims of Plymouth on Thanksgiving when the family gets together for the big turkey dinner. It is as unthinkable to celebrate Thanksgiving Day without thoughts of old Pilgrims, as it is to have Thanksgiving dinner without turkey!
One of the greatest myths of Thanksgiving concerns the role of the Pilgrims. They most likely did not eat turkey on their day of thanksgiving.
The colonists who established the Plymouth Colony did not refer to themselves as Pilgrims. Their self-descriptive title was “Separatists” denoting their theological break with the Church of England.
I’m going to call them colonists — a break from tradition. No need to romanticize the event. The colonists, who supposedly celebrated the first thanksgiving in America, were fleeing religious persecution in their native England. In 1609 a large group of these people left England for the religious freedom in Holland where they lived and prospered.
After a few years their children were speaking Dutch and had become attached to the Dutch way of life. This worried the new immigrants. So they decided to leave Holland and travel to the New World. The group, numbering around 100 men, women and children, left Plymouth, England, on Sept. 6, 1620, in the Mayflower.
The first winter was devastating for the new settlers. The natives taught them to grow corn and how to store food away for the winter. The harvest in October was very successful.
The following year their harvest was not as bountiful and they ran short of food. The third year brought a spring and summer that was hot and dry and crops were dying in the fields. Colonist Governor William Bradford ordered a day of fasting and prayer, and it was soon thereafter that rain came. To celebrate, Nov. 29 of that year was proclaimed a day of thanksgiving.
But long ago, before the colonists and the first Europeans arrived in North America, the farmers in Europe held celebrations at harvest time. To give thanks for their good fortune and the abundance of food, the farm workers filled a curved goat’s horn with fruit and grain. This symbol was called a cornucopia or horn of plenty. When they came to Canada they brought this tradition with them.
Around the same time as the colonists, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, also held huge feasts of thanks.
If those colonists didn’t eat turkey, what did they eat on that special day? My guess is they ate a corn bread meal, wild meat — rabbit, grouse or venison — and maybe stamppot. Stamppot is a popular Dutch food (mixture of mashed potatoes, carrots and sausages) eaten during the fall months. Maybe they ate boerenkool. That’s also a popular old-time Dutch food. It’s a mixture of a Dutch kale, mashed potatoes and good cut-up sausages all mixed together. Remember these folks had become attached to the Dutch way of life.
That’s it, stamppot and boerenkool! Why not romanticize a little?
