Watching the commercials on television lately or walking into a department store, makes you think that Thanksgiving isn’t even on people’s minds.  Everyone seems to be overlooking this National Holiday and focused instead on Christmas.  I think this is a tragic mistake.

Thanksgiving is one day out of the year that we come together as a country.  We gather with our family and friends and essentially count our blessings.  We give thanks to the One above from whom all blessings flow.  It is a beautiful day regardless of the weather.

As my family prepares for our Day of Thanks, we are doing a unit study on the Pilgrims.  This week we had a very interesting discussion.  Using Bruce Feiler’s book, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, as a stepping stone, I raised the question, “Did the Pilgrims identify with the Israelites?”  we compared the Pilgrims to the Israelites of the Old Testament.

This is our list of comparisons, which I thought was good for the ages of my children.

Israelites:

They escaped slavery from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.  They literally followed God as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  They received the 10 Commandments and agreed to follow them.  They were in the wilderness and traveled to the Promised Land.  On the way, people died by natural causes or as a result to his/her sin or rebellion.  They were eventually successful and entered the Promised Land, but were told to drive out and conquer all the native tribes.

Pilgrims:

They were searching for anywhere they could worship God in their own way.  They fled England for religious persecution reasons and later chose to leave The Netherlands.  They were looking for freedom.  To obtain it, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean.  In a sense, they were seeking their own Promised Land.  They did not follow God literally; however, they certainly felt they were following God’s call.  Before disembarking the Mayflower, they drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact.  They land in a virtual wilderness as winter was setting in.  But through hard work, they built a settlement.  Along the way, many died from starvation, disease, and/or exposure.  They were eventually successful in creating their own Promised Land.

It is not a perfect comparison; however, there are definite similarities between the two groups.  Although the Pilgrims were not perfect in all of their actions with the native population, they did receive help from Squanto and celebrated Thanksgiving with about 90 Native Americans.  They did not come to conquer the region.

Another difference is that the Israelites complained and often showed a lack of faith in God.  Many times, the Israelites would fantasize about the food they had in Egypt as if it was worth being slaves.  I cannot speak to how the Pilgrims felt, but their actions speak louder.   A striking contrast is that not one Pilgrim returned to England when the Mayflower left.  Despite the hardships and uncertain future, the Pilgrims held freedom more dear than all the luxuries in Europe.

Does Thanksgiving have any Jewish roots?  According to Robin Sampson in her book, A Family Guide to Biblical Holidays, it seems so.  The Feast of Tabernacles is a joyous holiday with both historical and agricultural significance.  God’s people were to keep this holiday “in thankfulness to God for all the increase of the year.”  For seven days, families lived in tents or a temporary dwelling called a sukkah.  It was to remind them that their ancestors once lived for forty years in tents and were eventually allowed to the Promised Land.

Many Americans, upon seeing a decorated sukkah for the first time, remark how much the sukkah (and the holiday generally) reminds them of Thanksgiving.  The American pilgrims…were deeply religious people.  As they were trying to find a way to express their thanks for their survival and for the harvest, it is quite possible that they looked to the Bible (Leviticus 23:39) for an appropriate way of celebrating and based their holiday in part on the Feast of Tabernacles (pg. 346).

When our Founding Fathers were faced with building our country from scratch, they had many decisions to make.  One was to design the Great Seal of the United States.  Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams proposed the back of the seal to depict a scene with Moses and the Israelites.   This is a sign that our Founding Fathers, too, saw the similarities I mentioned above.

Our Thanksgiving menus might look a little different if Benjamin Franklin had his way in picking our national bird.  He proposed that our national bird be the turkey.  He wrote to his daughter, “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America…He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”  Click here to read the entire letter.

My family found all of this fascinating.  I hope you did, too.  If anything, I hope that this article made you think.  I am taking off all next week.  I want to wish each one of you a very “Happy Thanksgiving!”  Enjoy the food, the fellowship, and family.

Tags: Benjamin Franklin, Bruce Feiler, Feast of Tabernacles, Great Seal of the United States, Israelites, Old Testament, Pilgrims and Israelites, Thanksgiving, turkey

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 at 6:10 am and is filed under Homeschooling, Homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.