Eric Deetz wrote:

> To Lyle Browning and the rest of the list
>         Before the debate over the "first" Thanksgiving flares up into
> another civil war familiarize yourself with the book and you will see that
> the story about the first thanksgiving is included in a chapter about the
> pilgrim myth. It is all spelled out pretty well and does not try to
> establish the pilgrims as the first of anything. I would tend to agree with
> the authors however that Thankgiving as we know it and celebrate it today in
> this country originated with the interpretation of the pilgrim myth and not
> at Berkeley Hundred.
> Sincerely
>

If I remember correctly, and being Virginian and from Charles City County on
top of that, what got the ball rolling with Berkeley was the somewhat arrogant
insistence on that typically American need to demonstrate "firstness" of the
New Englanders, not the Pilgrim mythology with which I agree with Eric that the
Pilgrim/Puritan images predominate. Lots of firsts are steamrolled by the later
arrivals.


John White wrote:

My guess is that if you check close enough you would find the "first "
Thanksgiving
wrapped up in a ceremony practiced by the NE Native Peoples as the Midwinter
Rites.  We not only took their pumpkins , mincemeat, succatash and turkey but
their
holiday as well.

I rather thought that was typical of American entrepreneurial spirit, take a
good idea and run with it. I do disagree with the notion of "taking" as
inappropriate appropriation as too PC, however.

Charles Atkins wrote:

This brings up an interesting thought, maybe some of you would like to
comment on.  When two cultures interact, are ideas and practices given or
stolen from one to the other.  Are new emigrants given the right to
celebrate existing customs or do they steal the right to celebrate
practices commonly in use.  At what point does a new idea, gained from a
different culture, become part of the gaining culture.  Where does
responsibility end for and action taken by the individual, a culture, a
nation?

That's been going on since the beginnings of time. I don't think that giving or
stealing are the appropriate mental templates. If I venture to Vermont and see
maple syrup and bring some home to Virginia and my friends and neighbors start
a run on the stuff, are we stealing or taking something or simply does it
strike a responsive chord? Early Christianity appropriated "pagan" practices,
holy days and the like. Very little is invented out of whole cloth.

Lyle