PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- Over the highways and through the woods, past cranberry bogs we went to Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass., an attractive place that likes to call itself "America's Hometown." The Plantation is a re-creation of the first established English community in the New World, home of the Pilgrims who Americans celebrate at Thanksgiving -- and also of Hobbamock, a Wampanoag man who was the Plymouth Colony's interpreter and guide.
It's the ideal place to learn about the history and meaning behind America's national holiday. That must be why, when I visited it last Sunday, the weekend before Thanksgiving, Plimoth was swarming with visitors, families and school groups.
The year is forever 1627 in Pilgrim Village on the shore of Plymouth Bay. In the village are clusters of authentic wooden homes -- huts with thatched roofs and dirt floors. "Colonists," in 17th-century costume and speaking in character, telling tales of their recent experience and explaining the details of their daily life. In one home a pot of stew was bubbling and a woman was busy making groat bread, which she carried to the communal hearth where villagers baked their dry flat bread.
Adjacent to the village is Hobbamock's homesite, and a seasonal homesite for the Wampanoag people. Here, visitors can enter a puttukakuan (round house), a furnished dwelling with a pit fire and comfortable fur-lined bedding. Native Americans clad in deerskin speak from a modern perspective while demonstrating traditional ways of life. There was a young man making a mishoon (a dugout canoe) from a log, burning into the wood and scraping out the center. Depending on the season, other activities you'll find the Wampanoag engaged in range from from building houses to planting gardens and harvesting.
Displacement and devastation was the fate of the friendly Wampanoag, who welcomed the Pilgrims and shared their food and land. There are reportedly just 4,000 Wampanoag alive today in eastern Massachusetts. They have preserved much of their traditional cultural ways in spite of the European invasion and are currently reclaiming their language, which fell into disuse in the early 19th century.
A third site at this living museum is the Mayflower II, a re-creation of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620. Built in Devonshire, England, the ship sailed to Plymouth in 1957, where it is now docked to give visitors another angle on the Pilgrim experience -- how they got to the New World in the first place.
You come away from Plimoth Plantation with a better grasp of what impelled the Pilgrims on their epic flight. They were a group of religious dissidents, considered subversive in their native land after establishing a breakaway religious community separate from the institutional Church of England. They settled in the Netherlands, but after 12 years, got backing from London merchants to set up a colony in America.
This complex background is conveyed most effectively by the "colonists" in the village, who will accost you with complaints about the ecclesiastical and political authorities from whom they escaped, or regale you with stories of life in Holland.
The Mayflower originally anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod, where the Mayflower Compact was signed in November 1620. But seeking a safe haven, the Pilgrims sailed on and dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor a month later. They began to build their village on Christmas Day.
Half of the original 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower died of sickness during the first winter. Those who made it did so thanks to the help of the native people who helped them plant and establish their colony. The harvest festival of 1621 that colonists shared with 90 Wampanoag men to give thanks for the blessing of their first year in Plymouth is the basis of the Thanksgiving that we celebrate today. The original celebration lasted three days.
An exhibit at the Plimoth Visitor Center, "Thanksgiving: Memory, Myth and Meaning," sets out to explore this seminal American holiday and to share individual and collective memories of the event.
From ancient times, Native Americans have conducted rituals of thanks centered on the interconnectedness of all living things. Giving thanks to the Creator through offerings, songs and prayers has been an important part of their daily life. The English had their own religious customs, praying in church or privately, and had a tradition of amusements and feasts on holidays.
Throughout American history, colonists celebrated "thanksgivings" on many occasions, often after wars, declaring them as needed. The first national Thanksgiving occurred in 1777, followed by periodic national celebrations. It wasn't until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that National Thanksgiving would be a regular holiday celebrated each November, based on the Plimoth harvest festival, which he designated "The First Thanksgiving."
Thirteen years later the first college football championship was played on Thanksgiving Day, beginning another holiday ritual. It wasn't until 1941 that Thanksgiving was set on the fourth Thursday of November.
But not everyone felt that the arrival of the Pilgrims was cause for celebration. Native Americans established their own tradition in 1970, calling for a "National Day of Mourning" to acknowledge the loss of their ways of life as the American nation expanded.
Today, though, the history seems in danger of being lost amid the holiday frenzy. Thanksgiving weekend signals the beginning of the winter shopping season, is the busiest travel time of the year and sees the briskest video rental.
In the midst of this busy time it's good to reflect on the origins of the holiday. Learning about the evolving history of Thanksgiving can be an inspiration to creating some "traditions" of your own, or of finding your own way to give thanks.