HFM BOCES closed Nov. 24-26 for Thanksgiving recess
HFM BOCES will be closed from Wednesday through Friday,
Nov. 24-26, 2010 for Thanksgiving recess. Classes will
resume on Monday, Nov. 29.
 While
enjoying your Thanksgiving recess this year, consider the
origins of the
holiday. Many societies
have a day set aside to give thanks for the many blessings they
enjoy. In the United States, Thanksgiving has become a time for
families and friends to get together, eat probably too much, and
give thanks.
Most Americans think
of the Mayflower Pilgrims when they think about the first Thanksgiving in
America, and much of that part of our history has become
distorted by time and the retelling of the tale.
Here is some history
about the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, and Wampanoag Indians that
has been left behind by our traditions.
• Contrary to popular
opinion, the Pilgrims didn't wear buckles on their shoes or
hats. They weren't teetotalers, either. They smoked tobacco and
drank beer.
•
It took the Mayflower 66 days to reach Massachusetts.
•
Before the Pilgrims hired her, the Mayflower was in the wine
trade in France; before that, she was in the fish trade with
Norway.
•
There was a baby born during the crossing of the Mayflower. He
was named Oceanus Hopkins.
 •
The Pilgrims landed at Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip
of Cape Cod, on November 11, 1620. Since the land was not good
for farming, they sailed across Massachusetts Bay to Plymouth.
•
In a Pilgrim household, the adults sat down to dinner and the
children waited on them.
•
To eat, the Pilgrims used a knife, spoon, a large napkin, and
fingers...no forks. They also shared plates and drinking
vessels.
•
Lobsters, clams, and mussels were considered "hard rations" when
the food supply was low. Many Pilgrims thought that lobsters
were fit only for pigs!
•
The turkey was familiar poultry in England. It was brought to
Europe 100 years earlier by the Spanish.
•
Only four married women survived the first harsh winter from
1620-1621. They supervised food preparations for the
three-day harvest feast for the 53 remaining colonists,
Wampanoag Chief Massasoit, and the 90 Indians who attended. That
event became known as "the first Thanksgiving," although the
Pilgrims themselves never called it that. To them, a day of
Thanksgiving was purely religious.
•
Pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce were not eaten at the first
Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims did eat roast wild fowl such as duck,
goose, and turkey; corn meal; cod; sea bass; and venison brought
by the Indians.
•
Massasoit in the Wampanoag language means "Great Leader." His
real name was Ousamequin or "Yellow Feather."
•
The Wampanoag Indians of southeast Massachusetts were the people
who befriended the Pilgrims. Their name means "People of the
Dawn" and they continue to live on Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's
Vineyard, and inland.
A national celebration
The first national
celebration of Thanksgiving was declared in 1775 by the
Continental Congress to celebrate the win at Saratoga during the
American Revolution.
 In
1863, 240 years after the first Thanksgiving, President Abraham
Lincoln, with the country mired in a "civil war of unequaled
magnitude and severity" issued a proclamation that would lead
the way to Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday.
"I do therefore
invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States,
and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in
foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of
November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwells in the Heavens," Lincoln wrote.
"And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions
justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings,
they do also, with humble penitence for our national
perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all
those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in
the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged,
and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to
heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may
be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of
peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."
"Thanksgiving Day
comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as
frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."
- Edward Sandford Martin |
