Harvest Home Service

HARVEST-HOME SERVICE. 
Historical.

       The early history of the Hellenic races often brings out the fact that, though professing descent from the gods, they are found in possession of customs belonging to an older civilization. Our veneration for the fathers of New England must not allow us to suppose that they created an institution wholly new. The Mayflower had for its passengers liberty-loving Englishmen, separated only so far as conscience commanded from their native land. The seed of many an organism, ecclesiastical, civil, and social, often thought to have been original, they brought with them, to be planted in a new soil and developed in its environment as a new variety. While we forget not the seed, those new conditions had a force, rarely enough considered, in determining their action in church and state, in which opinions and practices, which some professed to love still as they left old England, seem to have been lost at sea.

       It is an undisputed fact that the thanksgiving day which the English colonists brought with them to Plymouth, Salem, Boston, and Hartford was a religious day, not of annual recurrence, but proclaimed, as occasion arose, for victories, rains, harvests, and all providential deliverances. This thanksgiving day they had observed in England. The Puritans, when forced to give up the keeping of Christmas, Easter, and saints' days on account of the sacrilege attending them, chose fast and thanksgiving days in their stead, and consecrated them entirely to holy uses. They spent the time in their churches. It was a Sabbath. There was no feasting, nor any family gathering. So if you think the Pilgrims were altogether a "solemn folk," remember that they developed our Thanksgiving day out of this strictly religious day of their fathers. It is our purpose briefly to show how this transformation came about.

       In the autumn of 1621 the Pilgrims had their first holiday season. The occasion is so important that the passage from Mourt's "Relation" is given in full:

       "Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors, they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed fine Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

       This has been generally termed the "first autumnal Thanksgiving day " in New England -- the inauguration of the harvest festival. That it was a harvest festival cannot be disputed, but the passage itself shows that it was not a day of religious thanksgiving to God, such as they observed at other times. It was not a day set apart for worship, but a whole week of festivity. No religious service is spoken of, and it is doubtful if any was held, other than their customary morning devotions. The Sabbath exercises which bounded the week might have been specially permeated with a thanksgiving spirit, but this season was not ordered as were thanksgiving days. The Pilgrims had come to Plymouth as a church, and as such they followed the practices of separatist congregations in England. They named thanksgiving days by a vote of the church. There the authority was originally vested in all the New England colonies, though at an early date it was, for convenience, transferred to the State - first to the General Court and afterward to the governor and council; in Connecticut to the court in 1639 and to the governor and magistrates as well in 1655. Prior to 1639, in Connecticut Colony, the Hartford and Windsor churches appointed their own days. In 1638 Windsor kept Wednesday, October 3d, Hartford, Thursday, October 4th. Until the time of Governor Andros it was the prerogative of the churches through their ministers to move the civil authorities for the appointment of a Thanksgiving day; but the royal governor took the matter into his own hands, and royal governors since have followed his example. We cannot imagine the church of John Robinson moving for the keeping of Plymouth's festival week as a religious service. They would surely have been shocked at recreations during a religious season. Bradford relates how, on the Christmas day following, most of the new-comers excused themselves from going to work from conscientious scruples, whom the governor found at noontime "pitching ye bare" and "playing at stoole-ball." He thereupon confiscated their "implements" and bade them keep their houses if they made the keeping of the day "a matter of devotion," in which action he mirthfully justified himself by the claim that it "was against his conscience that they should play and others work." It was this very mingling of sports with religious services that they had condemned in England. They would not have tolerated ball-playing on one of their religions thanksgiving days; but we have no doubt the governor himself and the doughty captain, after having been satisfied with goodly venison, watched approvingly the victors in games of stoole-ball during that festival week. Those who say this was the "first autumnal Thanksgiving day" need not be so hard on those who prefer foot-ball to stoole-ball. The Pilgrims did not keep it as such, but they were unconsciously inaugurating influences which would eventually transform the character of their ecclesiastical thanksgiving day.

       The theory has been advanced by some that this festival week was suggested by the " Feast of Ingathering" known in Jewish history. All harvest festivals, whether among Christians or heathens, must be the same in essence. Only in respect to its intent and duration could this of Plymouth be compared to that in which worship and sacrifice were the burden of its ritual. John Robinson makes an extended reference to the Jewish feast as kept by Ezra, and finds only a solemn religious character attaching to it. The Pilgrims would not have patterned a festival after that and omitted its essential religious features. They were not cutting their cloth after any ancient fashion-plate.

       It is more probable that this festival week had a kinship to the harvest-home of England. The gathering in of the harvest was the main thought in the celebration; so it had been in England. It corresponded in point of duration. Richard Carew, in his "Survey of Cornwall," says of the English harvest festival, "Neither doth the good cheer wholly expire (though it somewhat decrease) but with the end of the week." There was no bringing home, with much ceremony, from the field, of the last shock of corn, fantastically arrayed in brilliant finery; no "blessing of the cart" or "kissing of the sheaves"; no harvest-song so familiar in the fatherland. 

Here's a health to the barley-mow ;

Here's a health to the man

Who very well can

Both harrow and plow and sow.

       They had no taste for ceremonies, and their surroundings in the wilderness were not suitable for them. Still they exhibited the worthier and more sensible elements of their English harvest-home. The master and servant had the old-time fellowship at the feast, and the new-time guest, with his royal crown of eagle feathers, was a most fitting lord of such forest bounty. Their "hockey-cake" was of the proper sort, and the goose, if not of aristocratic lineage, was much to their liking. Surely if this occasion is to be judged by analogy it had affinities with old England. But it seems most likely that this harvest celebration - though it may have been suggested by harvest customs in their native land - arose naturally in the midst of their circumstances as the occasion demanded. It was an inspiration. Its significance is rather in its idea.

       Herein is the charm of that festivity: it displays the brighter side of our forefathers' characters. Religion had its place, but they were not averse to recreations and amusements. They looked with sad concern, no doubt, upon the mature faces of their children, and sought to cheer them by joining them at play. That festival week was the first time they had dared to take from their labors for merrymaking. The grand hunt of the four prime shots was an event. The muster of the military, before the admiring eyes of wives and sisters, was an appropriate laudation of soldierly duty. Hospitality to their Indian friends was a winsome lesson to those savage hearts. So the Pilgrims, because they believed in social pleasures, from their poverty of time kept that royal feast.

       There was something prophetic of the Thanksgiving dinner of their descendants in the occasion. The provisions must have been bountiful, for there were about one hundred and forty persons, including the ninety of Massasoit's company, who were entertained for three days. Rare opportunity was afforded the Pilgrim mothers of the households, into which the colonists were divided, for the arts of cooking. All had their share of the supplies. Various kinds of sea-food were at hand ; oysters the Indians brought them as desired. Ducks of the choicest varieties, highly prized by the epicures of the present day; geese that would have done honor to the Michaelmas feast of England; game of tempting flavor, from roasted venison to broiled partridge; and, above all - facile princeps of the New England feast -  the turkey, of which they found a great store in the forest, and which they thus early crowned queen of their bounty, to which their descendants have been loyal, if they have failed to imitate them in other respects - these all garnished their tables throughout the harvest week. Kettles, skillets, and spits were overworked, while thus their pewter plates, spoons, knives, and skewers, which were kindly assisted by their fingers, made merry. Nor were these meats without the company of the barley-loaf and the cakes of Indian meal more highly prized than wheat-fed millions can imagine. As to the abundance of their vegetables we have the poetic testimony of the governor himself - for his excellency wrote poetry, the lines of which were measured, not by dactylic or iambic feet, but by the twelve-inch rule;

"All sorts of grain which our own land doth yield
Was hither brought, and sown in every field;
As wheat and rye, barley, oats, beans and pease
Here all thrive, and they profit from them raise.
All sorts of roots and herbs in gardens grow -
Parsnips, carrots, turnips, or what you'll sow,
Onions, melons, cucumbers, radishes,
Skirrets, beets, cole worts, and fair cabbages."

       They had a taste, too, for what they called "sallet herbs," and the pumpkins climbed their cornstalks as they have ever since. Wild grapes they had, and we can almost detect the smack when we read their words "very sweete and strong," whose sweetness might have added strength on opportunity. The fact is that, though we know so little of the home life of the Pilgrims, we know enough to warrant that their harvest festival was worthy of its Indian guests, and altogether creditable to their descendants.

       The occasion was unique, and not in itself adapted to be perpetuated in such proportions. As the peach-tree puts forth its tinted bloom before its abiding foliage, so this harvest festival, which was not the Puritan thanksgiving day, was the bursting into life of a new institution, the promise of autumnal feasts to come.  by Rev. W. De Loss Love in Religious Herald.