Assault of Thoughts - Thanksgiving Edition - 11/25/2010

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

First - Happy Thanksgiving!

- The New Republic has put up a series of archived articles that it has published on the Puritans here. I'll allow it because it's still interesting New England history. But it's still shaky to associate this too closely with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving marks a harvest celebration of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, who could accurately be described as "Puritans". The important thing to remember is that while it's probably safe to call all Pilgrims "Puritans", it's not safe at all to call all Puritans "Pilgrims" or associate all Puritans with Thanksgiving. The major Puritan wave came later and settled Massachusetts Bay Colony*. Here, The New Republic seems to present some articles on the Pilgrims, but some on later waves of Puritans that had nothing to do with the establishment of Thanksgiving.

- At Think Markets, Chidem Kurdas reviews past reactions to Thanksgiving. She cites Daniel Boorstin, noting that the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas, leaving Thanksgiving as a good chance to take it easy (so here Kurdas also talks about "Puritans" rather than "Pilgrims", but since she's not talking about the first Thanksgiving - but rather later celebrations of it - she seems in the clear). She also hints at some of the thinking behind Roosevelt's decision to establish Thanksgiving as the fourth Friday in November: it provided an extra shopping day and therefore served as a stimulus of sorts.

- Thanksgiving is always a great opportunity to highlight the power of market exchange to foster social progress. I'm sure everybody knows the story - when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth they required that everyone share everything they produced. They established a communist society, essentially. It failed miserably, Governor Bradford ended it, and they all lived happily ever after. Alex Tabarrok has a longer version here from a couple of years ago, with a good long selection from Bradford on the episode. I do think it's important to emphasize that this does not rule out charity or collective action. The survival of the colony was not merely due to the emergence of a market economy. They also have the Wampanoag to thank for their survival. But the point is clear - collectives cannot run markets. State care for the poor, of course, continued in Massachusetts throughout the colonial period and up to the present day. But that's very different from expecting a collective to run a market. I think it's great that we have such a good example of market efficiency so early in our history to point to. It sets a very important precedent.

- All this talk of Massachusetts is moot, of course. Why? Because the first Thanksgiving celebrated in English speaking America occurred where all great "firsts" in English speaking America occurred: Virginia. In 1619, two years before the Pilgrims celebrated theirs and almost a year before the Pilgrims even set sail on the Mayflower the twelve year veteran colonists in Virginia celebrated their own Thanksgiving at Berkeley Hundred (which is just up the road from William and Mary).



*This includes the earliest ancestors of mine that I know of to come to America. Thomas Joy came over to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 - a Puritan, but not a Pilgrim. My maternal grandmothers maiden name was Joy and we can trace it back from there. We're going to Baltimore this Thanksgiving, and I know my paternal grandmothers line has been in Baltimore (the Eney's) since at least 1850 (I've written here before about H. Vernon Eney and his work on the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1968). So the Eney's may go back a ways too - I just don't know. If Maryland was where they first settled, it's unlikely they've been here longer than Thomas Joy. We also have French Canadians on my mother's side - the Comeau's - who conceivably could have been here before Thomas Joy. Again I just don't know, but I imagine that's unlikely. The Kuehns themselves came from Germany in the 1890s or so, so they're the late-comers. Finally, on my Dad's side, we have Davises in ante-bellum Alabama. As I understand it, much of the settlement of Alabama came from the Carolinas, which again makes it unlikely that any of these Davises pre-date Thomas Joy - I have no reason to expect it, but again I just don't know (after the Civil War, the Alabama Davises moved to North Carolina where they stayed until the early 20th century at which point they moved to Maryland, where my great-grandmother Margaret Davis met and married my great-grandfather and well established Marylander H. Vernon Eney).