This week, millions of Americans will gather in extended families, eat to excess, and watch football in a state of pleasant drowsiness. The unluckiest among them will go shopping.
Most will not think much about Pilgrims or Indians, unless they have young children who dress up as such at school. In The First Thanksgiving, Robert Tracy McKenzie encourages Christians to think about Pilgrims and Indians, but not for any of the usual reasons. The Puritan Pilgrims who traveled on the Mayflower and landed on Cape Cod were not American patriots, capitalists, or believers in the freedom of religion as we typically understand it today. They weren't even first. Other Europeans had already organized thanksgiving services in Florida, Maine, and Virginia. McKenzie quips that what the early Plymouth settlers celebrated in 1621 could more accurately be called the “First American Protestant Christian Thanksgiving North of Virginia and South of Maine.”
The First Thanksgiving is actually only partly (even tangentially) about the feast that the Mayflower pilgrims celebrated in 1621. Larger sections of the book discuss McKenzie's Christian understanding of the discipline of history, the history and theology of the Pilgrims, and the evolution of Thanksgiving in the United States. Those looking for a simple and engaging narrative of the first thanksgiving might be disappointed (at least until they've read about two-thirds of the book), but there are good reasons why McKenzie, history department chairman at Wheaton College, constructs his story as he does. Keep reading
Also see
This Thanksgiving, Stop Idolizing the Pilgrims
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