Do you have a day off for Thanksgiving? Are you looking forward to time off work? If so, you might find it interesting that Thanksgiving Day has its roots in employment. The November holiday we call Thanksgiving is based on the harvest feast of the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Wampanoag Indians in the autumn of 1621. As the tradition goes, the feast lasted three days to give thanks to God for bringing them to this point – the harvest – after such a tremendously hard year. And what a year it had been. Half of their numbers had died of disease and starvation. Legend has it that times got so hard that each person’s daily rations consisted of only five kernels of corn. It was a year when the Pilgrims dug more graves than they built houses to live in. When the corn was harvested in the fall of 1621, it is said that out of the bounty, five grains were placed first on everyone’s plate to remind them of the hard times they had just come through. The tradition of the five kernels of corn is practiced by many families up to the present day. But without the second Thanksgiving Day, we would have never heard of the first event.

It would be easy to romanticize about the life the Pilgrims lived after that first Thanksgiving meal – that everything was rosy and they lived happily ever after. They did not. The next year, 1622, was especially hard. It didn’t have as much to do with the New England coastline weather as it did with the mentality of the Pilgrim community. You see, they were in debt to the Merchant Adventurers, a London investment company who had funded their trip. They were to establish a communal society in the New World where they would trade with the Native Americans for furs and pay any profits to the investors. Any game they hunted or crops they planted and harvested were to be shared equally among all the people of the community. Sounds great, right? The problem is, it didn’t give any incentive for anyone to do any extra work. In fact, the group began to go hungry because they did not tend to the crops that were planted that spring – everyone expected someone else to do the hard work of tending the fields. It led to a shortage of food. People began to steal crops in the middle of the night. Those who were caught were punished (usually whipped), but this still did not deter people from living a life of sloth and theft. Without anything being produced in their colony, they had nothing to trade with the Native Americans. Without trade, they had nothing to pay back their debt. They were spiraling downward to obscurity and extinction.

We would of never heard of the Pilgrims or the first Thanksgiving feast had it not been for a fundamental change in the way they operated as a society. The Plymouth Colony governor, William Bradford, decided a major shift needed to happen in the thinking of his community if they were going to survive another year. In the spring of 1623, he announced that their collective living arrangement would be replaced by private land ownership. Each family was given a parcel of land and told they were free to plant anything they desired on it. Whatever they grew, they could keep for themselves, but they also would not be bailed out if they did not plant crops by being fed by the "community” food pantry. Everyone was responsible for tending their own land, growing their own food and trading as they saw fit. If they did not work, they would not eat! Bradford recorded the overwhelming change this made in the Plymouth Colony.

This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.*

Bradford went on to describe that from that time forward, the Plymouth Colony saw work as a blessing and gave thanks for it. In fact, during the summer of 1623, he called the community to a day of fasting and prayer – which he called a Day of Thanksgiving – to thank God for his provision of crops, rain and good soil. In his memoirs 24 years later he reflected on this second Thanksgiving Day.

By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular planting was well seen, for all had, one way and other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.*

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? Have you thought of your ability to work as one of those blessings? Hard times are bound to come, as they did for the Pilgrims. What is your response to hard times? The Pilgrims initially wanted someone else to do the work they were all capable of doing and they starved. When they saw work as a blessing, but one that required their action, they flourished. On your day off from work, you might want to reflect on your blessings. You might even put five kernels of corn on your plate to remind you of your blessings:

One to remind you of the blessings of health.

One to remind you of the blessings of family.

One to remind you of the blessings of friends who lend a helping hand.

One to remind you of faith and hope beyond what we can see.

One to remind you of the ability to work so you can earn your daily bread.

* Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, by William Bradford, translated by Samuel Eliot Morison. As quoted in The Pilgrims & Capitalism Part II: What to Remind Yourself Every Thanksgiving. Triple Check.com, November 24, 2011

Painting "The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe - Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal