Holiday blurb...Happy Thanksgiving.

From Joel Mark, comments World Magazine Blog:
Their 65-day trip across the Atlantic in 1620 was cold and damp. Aiming for Virginia, the Mayflower was blown north to the unknown land of Massachusetts. Scurvy, typhus and tensions followed them all the way. They landed at Plymouth on December 11, 1620, with winter upon them.

Nathaniel Morton, record keeper for the Plymouth Colony, wrote that they had “no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter… What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men?”

Of the 103 who boarded the Mayflower, thirty were children. After a severe winter, only 55 souls met the spring alive. 12 of the 18 married women perished. Those who remained barely had the strength to put in the next year’s crop. It was all they could do to care for the sick and dying.

Supplies soon ran out. The seeds they brought from Europe for growing wheat wouldn’t grow in the stony soil. Squanto, a friendly English-speaking showed them how to plant corn, but their first crops were poor.

The Pilgrims coped with their dire circumstances by lifting their eyes to heaven. Nathaniel Morton called heaven, “their dearest country.” Looking upward was all they could do, according to Morton, to “quiet their spirits.” If you had survived all their disappointments, tragedies and losses, which way would you have looked?

In 1621, Gov. Bradford chose a day for expressing gratitude to God. They invited Indians to share the feast. Massasoit came with 90 others. The Indian contingent “went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation.” Their feast included fish, berries, watercress, lobster, dried fruit, clams, venison, and plums. King David’s words in the 92d Psalm led them on: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord.”