JANE'S FIRST THANKSGIVING
“Thanksgiving is my holiday beliebt, my favorite,” said Gila as she conscientiously set the
table with the best china and silverware, “after Pesach.”
Gila and
Leah had offered to do most of the planning and preparation for Thanksgiving
dinner this year, and Jane deLacey had wanted very much to help. They were glad Jane was taking such an
interest in the history and customs of her new home. It had been quite jarring for Jane to be
supratemporally transmigrated from England in 1594 to New York in 1904, and
she was getting used to her new life slowly.
A few days before, Leah had told
her the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Mayflower, and the First Thanksgiving. Gila already knew the story, but listened
attentively, her eyes shining.
“The
Pilgrims, brav they were,” Gila had
said, “to cross the sea, knowing not what lay ahead, but for a better life they
hoped, without shrek un mesukn, fear
and danger.” Gila turned to Leah. “I do not know the word, but noyt, trouble, pain they suffered.”
“Hardship?”
suggested Leah.
“Ye, but they were strong, nu?
I gedenk what has to me geshenen.”
“What has happened to you?” asked Jane, genuinely curious.
“When zeyer kleyn I was,” Gila began, “In a shtetl in Poland I lived. That is a village for Jews only. We hungerik
were, much of the time, and often by people from near villages we were onfallen.”
“They would
attack you?” asked Jane.
“Ye,
attack, that is the word. Life, so hard it was. So bad it was that my family to America sent me
to live. We hear in America it was
no matter where you were from or what religion you had, everyone the same gelegnheyt
had for a better life to try. And
here it has been hard, ye, but not so
hard as in Poland. And now, well I live, bsholem un freylekh, peaceful and happy! How the Pilgrims felt, this I know; I one of
them could be. I libn Thanksgiving,
the holiday of the immigrants!”
Jane
thought this over, and decided to find out as much as she could about the
Pilgrims. After all, it was an important
part of the three-hundred and ten years she had missed, and 1620 was not far
from 1594, which she knew well.
Now it was
Thanksgiving Day and the girls were in their good frocks, making the final
preparations, the food was cooking, and the table was being set. The smell of roasting turkey filled the
house, and it was making the girls very hungry.
“I libn the foods of the holiday tradition
,” Gila said, “that only at Thanksgiving we eat. And eating until no more can you fit in, and zingen of gathering together and giving
thanks.”
“Speaking
of traditions,” said Leah, coming into the dining room, “we have a custom in
this house that every year, one of us gets to be the Thanksgiving Pilgrim Girl,
and wear this Pilgrim costume.” She held
in her arms a brown dress with a broad white collar, cuffs and apron. She laid a white bonnet on the chair. “And because this is your first Thanksgiving
with us, Jane, we thought you should have the honor this year.”
Jane looked
at the dress, then at Leah and Gila.
They were smiling and hoping she was pleased. Jane took a deep breath.
“I thank
you for the honor,” she said, “I am grateful that you look on me with such
favor. But this I must decline.”
“But why?”
asked Leah.
“I have
busied myself with the books of your library, perusing chronicle histories of
this land and of England,
and of what befell the Pilgrim Fathers. They were Puritans.”
“Yes, I
know.”
“I have
known Puritans. Some did come to deLacey
Hall, and they did talk religion and politics with father, which made him most
displeased, and I have seen others in the towns, and they did all they could to
deprive good people of festive merriment.”
Gila was
thrilled, “Real Pilgrims you have met?”
Jane
sighed, “No, real Puritans I have met.
And I know them to be, as a lot, ill-humored and mean-spirited at best, and
passing dangerous at worst. They were
not persecuted; both their numbers and the reach of their persuasion were
growing apace, and but a score and three years after the voyage of the Mayflower,
the Puritans did seize power over all England and put the king to death!”
“Mercy me!”
cried Leah. Gila was stunned.
“The
Puritans you call the Pilgrims indeed were persecuted, only by the other Puritans! And this because they were ill-humored and mean-spirited
surpassing all others, and the main body of Puritans was set against them! They would not have looked kindly on our life
here, the vain-glory of this finely decorated house, the vanity of our elegant
frocks, which shamefully reveal our legs.
A dinner of Thanksgiving might they have condoned, but this gluttonous
feast would they have condemned!” Jane
turned to Gila. “I perceive the import
of their story for you, Gila, and I ken its meaning. Indeed do I have admiration for the Pilgrims,
for their courage and their yearning for freedom. Likewise am I thankful that
this land can be a land of opportunity; I shudder at the very thought of what
frightful realms into which I might have been transmigrated. Leave us all partake in the celebration of a
Day of Thanksgiving, but leave us let the Puritans alone.”
Leah put
down the dress. “I had never really
thought of it in quite that way, Jane. We
won’t have a Pilgrim Girl this year, but we will be thankful and celebrate just
the same!”
So the girls
gathered around the table and the Thanksgiving feast was laid before them. Samantha was delighted that Jane had done so
much of the cooking.
“On this Day of Thanksgiving,” Jane
announced, “we serve forth a dinner of a single course of five
dishes: purée of potatoes, green beans seeth’d, turkey-cock farséd with sage
and onions, together with sauce of the fowl, jelly of cranberries, and tart of
pompion.”
The girls
laughed. They went around the table, and each one told something that they were
thankful for. Samantha turned to Jane.
“You help us see our world with new
eyes, Jane,” she said, “One thing I am thankful for is that you have come here
to live with us!”
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