Happy New Year 2024! let’s hope.

Now you know that we’re serious here at the HP about updating old posts with new information. As we noted when we updated The First Thanksgiving, we’re always learning and growing right along with you:

Yes, we strive to be accurate in our posts, but they only reflect the extent of our knowledge at the time of posting. We realize now, many years in, that some of our content is now badly outdated and even inaccurate–and, importantly, that it was inaccurate at the time of writing, because our own knowledge was incomplete.

So in short, we have to myth-bust ourselves as well as everyone else, and today we’re looking at our much-traveled post on “The City Upon a Hill”, which you’ll find at the top of the site as its own page, such is its popularity with people searching for information on this by-now familiar phrase. Now that we’ve posted this update on the main page, we’ll correct the dedicated page as well.

Again, we’ll do as we always do when close-reading a text: our comments follow the original text, indented and set off by a long dash.

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The “City upon a Hill” section of the sermon called “A Model of Christian Charity” was written in 1630 by the Puritan leader John Winthrop while the first group of Puritan emigrants was still onboard their ship, the Arbella, waiting to disembark and create their first settlement in what would become New England. The “City” section of this sermon was pulled out by later readers as a crystallization of the Puritan mission in the New World.

–Oh it’s very embarrassing to find such an error right at the start. The “Model” was not a sermon. Because Winthrop was not a minister. It was what he would have called a “lay sermon” or “lay exhortation”: a religious meditation written by a layperson (not clergy) and shared with others informally. The Puritans encouraged each other to share their spiritual seeking and reflections for their mutual benefit. They did this with friends, their families, small groups gathered to discuss a recent sermon and, sometimes, during worship services. If there was no minister to tend a congregation, respected laymen might speak informally to the people who gathered on the sabbath. This was not a sermon, because the laymen could not take the place of a minister ordained by God. Only an ordained minister could administer communion and baptize people (the only two sacraments the Puritans observed). But a layman (yes, always a man) could get up in front of a group of people gathered to worship and speak to them until the were able to hire a minister. This was what they called “exhorting” or “exhortation”.

So the “Model” was a lay exhortation written by John Winthrop. Which makes sense–he was deeply respected for his spirituality. But everything else we are taught about the “Model” and its “City” section is very wrong.

Cut to Daniel T. Rodgers’ amazing book: As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon”, which we read avidly here at the HP. He tells the story better than we can here, but let’s hit the main points (all on page 4):

• “None of those who voyaged with John Winthrop to the Puritan settlement in New England left any record that they heard Winthrop’s words…”
• “Most likely ‘A Model of Christian Charity’ was never delivered as a sermon at all.”
• “Although copies… circulated in England during his lifetime, by the end of the 17th century they had all literally vanished from memory.”

One copy was found in 1809, but not printed until 1838. It promptly disappeared again, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that it fell into the spotlight, through the efforts of two very different people: politician Ronald Reagan (but really his speechwriters) and the literary scholar Sacvan Bercovitch. Each side resuscitated the lay sermon with very different purposes. If you want to know why Reagan’s side won out with its COMPLETELY mythical reading of John Winthrop’s work… get Rodgers’ amazing book.

For now, we move on to the rest of our post, which thankfully requires no further heavy-lifting. You can scroll down to the very last paragraph for our final change.

Of course, as with any topic touching on the Puritans, there’s some myth-busting to be done. By now, the “City upon a Hill” excerpt has come to represent irritating Puritan pridefulness—they thought they were perfect, a city on a hill that everyone else would admire and want to emulate. In reality, the excerpt is far from a back-patting exercise. It is a gauntlet laid down to the already weary would-be settlers. Let’s go through it:

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the Counsel of Micah, to do Justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God:

The “shipwreck” Winthrop refers to is the wrath of God that falls on peoples or nations who fail to do God’s will. Earlier in the sermon, Winthrop has been at once warning the people that they must not fail in their efforts to set up a godly state in the new World and reassuring them that this does not mean they can never make a mistake. God is with them, and will suffer small failings. But if, like the government and church of England, the Puritans forsake their mission to create a truly godly society, they will suffer the wrath of God. This is the shipwreck to be avoided.

…for this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly Affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, we must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality, we must delight in eache other, make others Conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labour, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as his own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways…

This is a beautiful passage, reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount in its focus on mercy, kindness, sharing, and other selfless qualities. The Puritans will not succeed by harrying out the sinner or otherwise smiting evil, but by loving each other, caring for each other, and “abridging our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities” (that is, there will be equality of wealth, with no one living in luxury while others starve). They will delight in each other,  making others’ conditions their own, and they will do all this to create a natural community of faith. The point here is that religious faith will not be mandated or policed or forced on anyone. It will be generated naturally by the hope and love and faith of the people themselves. It will be an effect, not a cause. The Quakers would try to live out this same philosophy decades later.

…so that we shall see much more of his wisdom power goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with:

And how. That’s an understatement. The projected society would be almost unequalled anywhere in the known world.

…we shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the lord make it like that of New England:

Here comes the crux of the excerpt. Why will later settlers hope their societies will be like New England? Because of the love and comradeship, care and goodwill in New England. Notice that so far Winthrop has been urging his people to be caring and loving and selfless. He isn’t saying they already are all those things. He isn’t boasting about a pre-existing condition. He is urging them to become caring and loving and selfless, in the name of their godly mission, so that they will truly succeed. If—and it’s a big if—they succeed in becoming all those good things, their society will be admired. It’s not really that the Puritans will be admired so much as their society will be admired. There’s no self in this for Winthrop; it’s all about serving God as a society, and not about individuals becoming famous for their virtue. To him, there’s a difference. Fame may come as a result of serving God, but it’s the serving of God that matters.

…for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the way of God and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into Curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going:

First, we see what “city on a hill” really means: it doesn’t mean perfect, it means visible. They will be under a microscope, unable to hide their failures from all the eyes trained on them. No one wants to live in a city on a hill, because all of your faults and failings are in plain view.

Second, Winthrop wasn’t just speculating. This fate of becoming a byword for failure had already befallen every English colony in North America by 1630. Roanoake had disappeared, and Jamestown was so well-known in England for the horrors its unprepared settlers suffered that by the time the Puritans sailed their main goal was to avoid Jamestown’s very well-publicized failures. Among the many reasons the Puritans did not want to settle in Virginia was to avoid contamination with Jamestown’s perpetual bad luck (which the Puritans put down in large part to the colony’s lack of a commission from God). Even Plimoth Plantation, founded by Separatists just 10 years earlier, wasn’t exactly thriving. The Puritans settled far from the Pilgrims. So there was evidence, to Winthrop, that God had already withdrawn his support from all previous English settlements. The stakes were high.

…And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel [in] Deut. 30. Beloved there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil in that we are Commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandements and his Ordinance, and his laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it:

In closing (“to shut up this discourse”), Winthrop dramatically positions his group on the very edge of life and death, good and evil; they have never been more free to choose which way they will go. It’s all up for grabs. If Winthrop was sure that it would be easy for the Puritan to make the right choice, because they were so much better than everyone else in the world, he wouldn’t have hammered this point home. He wouldn’t have had to show them how high the stakes were, and he wouldn’t have supposed there was even a choice to be made. Since he was a realist, albeit a compassionate one, Winthrop reiterated the fact that the Puritans too, like everyone else, had to choose good over evil.

… But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other Gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast Sea to possess it:

Again, high stakes. The important thing to note here is what Winthrop considers to be the threat: “our pleasures and profits”. Colonies were founded to make money. Everyone knew that. And even the Puritans would have to repay their investors. They were business people, many of them London merchants, and they would set about creating industry in New England. They were also normal people who loved dancing, music, alcohol, sex, and love, and they would enjoy all those things in their new land. Being a Puritan was not about denial. It was about balance. Enjoy without attachment, enjoy without letting pleasure become your master—this was the Puritan ideal (it’s also very Buddhist—see The Bhagavad Gita).

Therefore let us choose life, that we, and our Seed, may live; by obeying his voice, and cleaving to him, for he is our life, and our prosperity:

Let us choose life: it’s a very positive, very idealistic, beatific closing to the excerpt and the sermon. Winthrop even wrote it out in verse (I didn’t do that here for space reasons). Choose life that we may live, choose God for God is life. This sermon must have truly inspired the Puritans who heard it, in part because it did not confirm their virtue but challenged it. It is an exhortation to do better than they normally would, to try harder, to aim higher. It is not a smug confirmation that they are the best people in the world and that whatever they do will be better than what anyone else does. It is a call to virtue and effort, love and compassion, sharing and helping that does Winthrop and his group credit. In that sense, it is the first of many other great American calls to idealism and justice, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

–As we said above, there were likely no “Puritans who heard it” since we have no evidence that John ever delivered this lay sermon/exhortation to anyone. There were 11 ships in what we now call “the Winthrop fleet” that brought Puritans from England in 1630, so there was no way that everyone could have heard it even if John had delivered it during the voyage. It seems clear he wrote it to be published in England, then distributed there and in what he called New England. This was the standard practice for publications by Puritans in New England until a printing press was established in the colonies.

But knowing John, we feel pretty confident in saying that the message to be better people was one he likely delivered many, many times over, to groups large and small, as a matter of course rather than one emotional, dramatic set-piece speech. If only they–and he, for that matter–could have lived up to the call to put personal financial gain aside for the commonwealth. We’d be living in a very different, and much better, world today. As usual, it’s up to us to do what they did not, and take our future into our own hands.

Re-running our Christmas Classic this year. Enjoy the holiday break!

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In December we think of Christmas and the ever-evolving forms of celebration of that holiday in America. And being the HP, we think of the very long period over which Christmas was not celebrated in Woodland New England.

The Separatist Pilgrims and the Puritans, the two English groups who settled what is now New England, did not celebrate Christmas because they did not celebrate any holidays, because they believed that every day was given by God, and so every day was holy. It was humans who picked and chose certain days to be better than the rest, thus impugning God’s holy creation by identifying some days as unimportant and boring. Holidays were the creation of humans, not God, and an insult to God in more ways than one: not only was the creation of holidays a disparagement of other days, but the usual form of celebrating holidays in England involved raucous immorality. There were few silent nights during religious holidays in Europe. They were times of drunkenness, gaming, gambling, dancing, and licentiousness, and as a major Christian holiday, Christmas involved high levels of all these things—let’s just say there were a lot of babies born the next September. “Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas,” wrote the reformist Bishop of Worcester Hugh Latimer in the mid-1500s, “than in all the 12 months besides.”

While they lived in England, the Pilgrims and the Puritans withdrew from Christmas celebrations, conspicuous by their absence from the debauched partying in the streets. When they removed to America, both groups took great pleasure in putting an end to the observance of holidays, Christmas in particular. Both groups observed many special days, either of thanksgiving or fasting. When something particularly good happened, a thanksgiving was held. This involved a church service and then gatherings at home or in groups (see Truth v. Myth: The First Thanksgiving for more). When danger threatened, or something bad happened, a fast was held. This involved a day of church services preceded by fasting, which meant not eating and even refraining from sex the night before. (Puritans knew that nothing humbled people like hunger and celibacy.) No other special days were observed.

So December 25 was just like any other day for the Pilgrims and Puritans. If it was a Sunday, you’d go to church and perhaps hear a sermon that referenced Jesus’ birth. If it was a Tuesday, you got up and went to work as usual. In Plimoth, where the Separatist Pilgrims were outnumbered by unreformed Anglicans, Governor Bradford had a hard time stopping the Anglicans from celebrating Christmas. The Anglicans would not learn from the example of the Separatists, who were hard at work on Christmas day 1621. Here is Bradford’s good-humored account of a run-in he had with unreformed celebrants that day (he refers to himself in the third person here as “the Governor”):

“And herewith I shall end this year. Only I shall remember one passage more, rather of mirth than of weight. One the day called Christmas day, the Governor called them out to work, as was used. But the most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it matter of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed; so he led away the rest and left them. But when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play, openly; some pitching the bar and some at stool-ball, and such like sports. So he went to them, and took away their implements, and told them that was against his conscience, that they should play and others work. If they made the keeping of [Christmas a] matter of devotion, let them keep [to] their houses, but there should be no gaming or revelling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.” [Of Plymouth Plantation, 107]

When the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony absorbed the Pilgrim Plimoth Colony into itself, and Massachusetts came under direct royal control in 1681 (losing its political independence), the Anglican governor assigned to the colony brought back Christmas celebrations. In 1686, when King James II created the Dominion of New England, composed of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and East and West Jersey, and designed specifically to destroy Puritan political independence and religious identity, the royal governor James chose, Edmund Andros, was bitterly resented by all his new subjects. When Andros went to church to celebrate Christmas in Boston in 1686 he needed an armed escort to protect him.

Now Christmas was associated with royal dictatorship and all the grief of the Dominion, and the people of New England and especially Massachusetts continued to boycott the holiday well into the 18th century. When the Revolutionary War began, Christmas boycotts rose in popularity as the day was again tied to royal control and tyranny. After the war, Congress met on Christmas Day, businesses were open, and while private celebrations were not uncommon, there was no official recognition of Christmas in New England. In fact, no state recognized Christmas as an official holiday until Alabama took the plunge in 1836. President Grant made it a federal holiday in 1870, and that was about the time that New England at last gave up the remnants of its ancient resistance. (Readers of Little Women, which Louisa May Alcott began to write in Concord, MA in 1868, will remember that while the Marches celebrate Christmas with gusto as well as reverence, Amy March is able to go to a store first thing Christmas morning to exchange a gift, revealing that Christmas was still a day of business in Massachusetts at that late date.)

It’s ironic, given this history, that the winter scenes created by Massachusetts-based lithographers Currier and Ives became the template for “a traditional New England Christmas” in the 1870s, complete with one-horse open sleighs and jingle bells. Sleigh rides, roasting chestnuts, spiced apple cider—all these Christmas traditions originated in New England, but they were not specific to Christmas when New Englanders enjoyed them in the 18th century. They were just part of winter. Even the “traditional” white Christmas relies on a cold northern winter, a defining characteristic of the region that no one in colonial times associated with the holiday.

Today, there are still branches of Protestantism that look down on “the observance of days”, and urge that all days be seen as equally holy and important. But Christmas is here to stay… for the foreseeable future, anyway.

We’re introducing a new series here at the HP, this one devoted to correcting our own previous errors.

Yes, we strive to be accurate in our posts, but they only reflect the extent of our knowledge at the time of posting. We realize now, many years in, that some of our content is now badly outdated and even inaccurate–and, importantly, that it was inaccurate at the time of writing, because our own knowledge was incomplete.

Do we ignore this? Never! We fix it, and we’re starting with our very auncient post on “the first Thanksgiving”, which seriously needs revision. Our knowledge and appreciation of Indigenous history has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and needs to inform this post.

We’re going to subject it to the same merciless close-reading we subject others to, with the original writing first, and our response after in bold.

And so, enjoy anew, or perhaps for the first time, our post on Truth and Myth and the First Thanksgiving

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This is the time of year when people take a moment to wonder about the Pilgrims: why were they so cruel to the Indians? The Thanksgiving celebration is marred by this concern. There are many reasons why it shouldn’t be. First, Thanksgiving has only been a holiday since 1863. Second, it had nothing to do with the Pilgrims whatsoever.

–Wow, we can’t believe we wrote this. It’s technically correct, but so very technically that its correctness not only has no meaning but is actually harmful. Yes, Thanksgiving didn’t become an official holiday in the U.S. until 1863, and the Pilgrims did not celebrate it. But it is now so inextricably and obviously tied to the endless destruction of colonization that the Separatists we call Pilgrims were early agents of that it is a very appropriate, symbolic time to protest that destruction.

President Lincoln instituted this holiday during the Civil War to unite the U.S. in thanks for its blessings even in the midst of that terrible war. Here’s how he put it:

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

—Britain and France have refused, in the end, to support the Confederacy, the U.S. itself is still intact and strong, and the U.S. Army and Navy are driving back the enemy.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

—The U.S. economy has not fallen apart for lack of slave-produced cotton, as the South had always predicted it would. Industry and agriculture are stronger than ever and the U.S. continues to expand.

–“Slave-produced”?? Again this is painful to see. We mean “cotton produced by the forced labor of enslaved people.”

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. 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 dwelleth in the Heavens.

—God has punished the U.S. with this war for the sin of slavery, but is showing encouraging signs of his support for the U.S. war effort.

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, tranquillity and Union.

—While thanking God for his mercies to the U.S. so far, Americans should also offer up prayers asking for his care for all those who have lost someone in the war, and asking for his help in ending the war as quickly as possible.

So the First Thanksgiving in the U.S. was held in November 1863 and inaugurated for a good cause.

–Yes, but it very quickly lost all connection to ending slavery and became a celebration of the Pilgrims, so let’s deal with that real history.

The first lower-case “t” thanksgiving in what would become the U.S. was held in November 1621 and was merely the first of many, many days of thanksgiving observed by the Pilgrims and was not celebrated as an annual holiday at all. Let’s go back to the original article to learn the real story:

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The First Thanksgiving: it’s a hallowed phrase that, like “Washington crossing the Delaware“, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” or “Damn the torpedoes!”, does not bring up many solid facts. Unfortunately, “the first Thanksgiving” is usually either completely debunked, with people saying no such thing ever happened, or used as a weapon against the Pilgrims—i.e., they had a lovely Thanksgiving with the Indians and then killed them all.

The truth about the first Thanksgiving is that it did happen, in the fall of 1621. The Pilgrims had landed in what is now Massachusetts the previous November—a terrible time to begin a colony. Their provisions were low, and it was too late to plant anything. It is another myth that they landed so late because they got lost. They had intended to land south of Long Island, New York and settle in what is now New Jersey, where it was warmer, but their ship was almost destroyed in a dangerous reef area just south of Cape Cod, and the captain turned back. They then had to crawl the ship down the Cape, looking for a suitable place to land. Long story short, they ended up in what is now Plymouth.

Most Americans know how so many of those first settlers died from starvation and disease over the winter, and how it was only by raiding Wampanoag food caches that the colony survived at all. By the spring, there were not many colonists left to plant food, but they dragged themselves out to do so. They had good luck, and help from the Wampanoags, who showed them planting techniques—potentially just to keep the Pilgrims from raiding their winter stores again. By November 1621, a very good harvest was in, and Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving.

–The morally neutral tone of the two paragraphs above is dishonest. Any discussion of the Separatists has to begin with their decision to colonize, which in itself is morally problematic, to say the least. Feeling compassion for their suffering is natural, but it displaces compassion for the Indigenous people who helped them when they could have destroyed them, and in return were systematically displaced from the land they belonged to and subjected to a determined attempt to eradicate them, by death or being driven away, that continues to this day in the U.S.

The Pilgrims often had days of thanksgiving. In times of trouble, they had fasts, which were sacrifices given for God’s help. In celebration times, they had thanksgivings to thank God for helping them. So thanksgivings were a common part of Pilgrim life, and calling  for a thanksgiving to praise God for the harvest would not have been unusual, and would have been a day spent largely in church and at prayer.

So the men went out to shoot some “fowls” for the dinner, and perhaps they ran into some Wampanoags, or maybe a few Wampanoags were visting Plymouth, as they often did, and heard about the day of celebration. At any rate, here is the only—yes, the one and only—eyewitness description of what happened next:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.  They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.  At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.  And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

That’s Edward Winslow, writing about the thanksgiving in his journal of Pilgrim life called “Mourt’s Relation”, published in 1622. We see that Massasoit and 90 of his men arrived at some point, having heard about the feast, and the Pilgrims hosted them for three days, and had some rather traditional Anglican sport firing their guns. Certainly the Wampanoags had a right to feel they could join in, since it was their help that had led to the good harvest. A one-day thanksgiving turned into three days of feasting and games.

And that was it. People often wonder why there wasn’t another thanksgiving the next year. We have seen that thanksgivings were not annual events, but came randomly when the people felt they were needed as a response to current events, and the idea of celebrating the harvest every year didn’t make sense to the Pilgrims. They had only held a thanksgiving for the first good harvest because it was a life-saving change from the previous fall. Once they were on their feet, they expected good harvests, and didn’t have to celebrate them. It was also against their Separatist beliefs to celebrate annual holidays—like the Puritans, they did not celebrate any holidays, not even Christmas. Holidays were a human invention that made some days better than others when God had made all days equally holy. So to hold a regular, annual harvest thanksgiving was not their way. When things were going well, Separatists and Puritans had days of thanksgiving. When things were going badly, they had days of fasting. None of them were annual holidays or cause for feasting (of course fast days weren’t, but even thanksgivings were mostly spent in church, with no special meal).

That one-time harvest thanksgiving was indeed a happy event, shared in equally by Pilgrim and Wampanoag. If only that first thanksgiving–an impromptu, bi-cultural celebration–had set the tone for the rest of the interactions between the English colonizers and the Indigenous peoples of North America. Since it did not, we can only think happily of the Thanksgiving called for by President Lincoln, who made an annual Thanksgiving a holiday in 1863.

–A “happy event”? …sort of. “Shared in equally”? Not really. The Wampanoags were already becoming aware, that early on, of the English colonizers’ single-minded self-centeredness. They weren’t invited to this thanksgiving that they made possible. But they came anyway, in one of the many hundreds of thousands of attempts Indigenous people made, and still make, to invite reciprocal relationship and live together in peace and understanding. Just deciding not to think about this, and to focus on 1863, is a cop-out we can’t believe we suggested to you.

The hype around the Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving only began after 1863, when historians noted the tradition of impromptu thanksgivings in the 1600s and made an unwarranted and improper connection to the new holiday to make it seem less new and more traditionally American. Before then, their many days of thanksgiving and fasting were completely forgotten. The Pilgrims certainly weren’t the inspiration for the holiday we celebrate today—they were retroactively brought into that in the worst, most ironic way: after the Civil War, southerners resented Thanksgiving as a “Union” holiday celebrating U.S. victories in the war and so the focus was changed from fighting slavery to the Pilgrims… who supported slavery.

This year, spend Thanksgiving however you like, and share the truth about where the holiday really comes from—the depths of a terrible war fought for the greatest of causes. Let Thanksgiving inspire you to stand up for the founding principles of this nation and re-commit to upholding them in your own daily life of good times and bad.

–You can’t really do what we recommend in this final paragraph without joining in any local protest against colonization and the destruction of people, lands, and living things that takes place in your area on Thanksgiving. Join with Indigenous people if you can to acknowledge that upholding the principles of liberty and justice for all can’t begin without a 180 move away from the values of colonization. Enjoy Thanksgiving as a reminder that a different, constructive way to live together exists—one that prioritizes reciprocal relationship. It’s not too late to honor what the Wampanoags were trying to establish!

Hear ye, hear ye–if ever there were a resource for myth-busting about the puritans of Woodland New England, it’s got to be the records kept by Congregational churches from the 1600s through the 1800s. Congregationalism was the denomination formed by the puritans who left England, and, as its name tells us, it was based on the independence of each local congregation. There was no hierarchy of priest or minister, vicar, bishop, archbishop. Orders did not flow from the top down to local churches. Each individual congregation completely governed itself–chose its minister and church officers, dismissed them if/when necessary, handled its own internal disagreements (cases of discipline), and provided/requested advice to/from other congregations.

This was revolutionary, and Congregationalism itself is fascinating. It’s still around, of course, but its high point of influence ended in the mid-1800s. We’ll be sharing more about Congregationalism in the coming weeks because it has a huge impact on our understanding of the puritans and the nation that their descendants did so much to ideate in the mid- and late-1700s during our Revolutionary period.

The problem with our understanding is that those church record books, which detailed not only all births, marriages, and deaths but also all church meetings, personal notes, letters, etc., of the congregation, were not available to the public, or even to scholars, because they had been locked away for safekeeping and completely forgotten. Or totally lost. Even when they were close at hand they weren’t easy to read. So tens of thousands of pages–hundreds of thousands–of puritan and Woodland New England history were effectively missing from our historical record, leaving scholars to extrapolate from a tiny fraction of records. An enormous scholarly canon was founded on scraps, and since there were so few primary sources around to contradict the scholars when they went wrong, scholarly opinion was eventually taken as fact–a kind of primary source in itself.

Then came New England’s Hidden Histories. This is a digital history project sponsored by the Congregational Library and Archive in Boston that’s now in it’s 12th year of finding, digitizing, and transcribing Congregational church records. It’s an amazing resource that is already blowing the scholarly world wide open and challenging ideas about the puritans and their religion that have been accepted as self-evident fact for 150 years. It’s free and open to the public, so while not all the records that you’ll find on the website have been transcribed, more are arriving every season, and what’s there already will keep you busy for a long time.

You just go to New England’s Hidden Histories at the Congregational Library and Archive website to get started. As noted above, we’re going to be diving into some of the records to share amazing new data that challenges many of the ideas about puritans that people hold dear–that they were punitive, excommunicating people who hated happiness and lived only to judge and hurt others… and that they were all white.

Get a head start on us–go to NEHH and check it out!

It’s Fall 2023, which means 2030 is just over 6 years away, which can only mean (here at the HP) that interest and input should start growing in the 400th anniversary of English colonizers we know as the puritans arriving on the Shawmut peninsula and shortly renaming it Boston.

This event has been celebrated in years past by most of the descendants of those English colonizers and immigrants from other parts of the globe who followed them. It has been mourned by Indigenous people and some of those colonizers’ descendants as the beginning of the many types of destruction that colonization relies on–of people, languages, trees, water, animals, and cultures.

In 1930, the tercentenary celebrations in Boston were aggressively massive.

$202K in 1930 was over $3 million in today’s dollars. That’s how you fund a “Monster Reception in Boston Garden.” That Afternoon Pageant on Boston Common lasted three hours and involved tens of thousands of people celebrating the Puritans as the font of all virtues and the founders of the nation. The legend lives on from the Singing Societies on down of the great week they called “Tercentenary”…

But in 2030, ideally, things will be different. They already are. The City of Boston authorized the Boston Commemoration Committee to “to ensure that the many diverse community voices and organizations who steward Boston’s history, and the City departments with responsibilities related to historical narrative, exhibits, curricula, archives, preservation, and event-planning, are all able to work together to deepen the public opportunities to engage with that history, in collaboration with state and federal partners.” That’s a quote from the full ordinance authoritizing the Committee, and if you read page 3 you’ll see the intention to people it with a full range of representatives.

We’re on board with this intention. As we teeter on the brink of a planetary crisis originating to a great extent in the economics of colonization, it’s time to use these “founding” anniversaries as a chance to change direction and return to the Indigenous economy that sustained the Earth in what we now call North America for millennia.

If you’re living in Massachusetts, get in touch with the Committee, and consider how you can shape local events in your own town. If you’re elsewhere in the world, investigate what’s happening locally. Let’s look ahead with optimism to 2030 and the end of tercentenary thinking!