Our story of Thanksgiving begins not far from The Conduit, in Rotherhithe on the Southbank of the River Thames.

The year was 1620 and King James I was on the throne of England. In what could be considered an early rendition of ‘Make England Great Again’, King Henry VIII had decided, a few decades before the Pilgrims set sail, that he was fed up with papal interference in his marriages and established himself as the authority on all things spiritual and political. He burned some Catholics at the stake, and then when he died his daughter Mary returned the favour by burning some Protestants. This back and forth of killing would continue for another century or so.

In those times of spiritual polarisation, the Pilgrims were the extremists. They thought the Anglican Church had not gone far enough in its separation from Rome and sought a new place where they could live their own truth. They temporarily moved to Amsterdam in hopes that they could live their extremist views more freely but found Holland too permissive a culture for their liking. And so, on a day in July they set sail from the Thames to The New World.

In November the Mayflower finally arrived in Cape Cod. The Pilgrims tried sailing south, but a combination of dangerous shoals and general incompetence kept them from reaching warmer waters. Instead, they anchored in a site that had already been named Plymouth by previous English explorers. Once anchored they prepared for their first winter.

[A side note to the story: It is a universal truth that when one group of people decides they are going to claim the land of another group of people, they must first perform mental gymnastics to convince themselves that those other people are not human beings. Because if they were, there would be no justifiable reason for stealing, colonising, or pillaging. For the Pilgrims this task was easy. The Indigenous people did not have Christian souls and were therefore not worthy of the same considerations as their fellow countrymen. This no-soul justification helped not just the Pilgrims, but all new arrivals in North and South America who for centuries later would steal land and establish new countries with preferential treatment for their own kind.]

Winters in Massachusetts are very cold. So cold, that nearly half of the 102 pilgrims had died from frost, malnutrition, and disease by the time the Samoset tribe found them in March 1621. One of the members of that tribe was a man named Squanto who had been kidnapped and taken to Europe years earlier. This story is not often told from the Indigenous people’s point of view, but we can take a moment to consider how Squanto and his fellow tribesmen must have felt when they first encountered the Pilgrims shivering and emaciated on board the remains of their vessel.

By the beginning of the 17^th century, the Indigenous tribes of North America were but a fraction of what they had been two centuries earlier. Here were people who looked just like the other Europeans who had brought their diseases and swords that were responsible for killing many of the people they loved. An understandable reaction would be to take out weapons and finish off what remained of the Pilgrims. Such an act could even be justified as self-preservation. But the Samoset did not do that. Instead, they did what so many European Christians at that time were incapable of doing: they took mercy on someone who did not share their beliefs. The Samoset tribesmen looked down at this hungry mass of immigrants and shared their knowledge, skills, and land with them so that they would not starve.

The rest of the story goes much like the one many American children learn in school. With Squanto’s help, the Pilgrims learned how to grow corn and trap turkey, and eventually to plant other crops appropriate for Massachusetts soil. The first Thanksgiving took place the following autumn when the Pilgrims invited the Indigenous people for a three-day feast to celebrate the harvest. That tradition continues to this day in America. The uniqueness of Thanksgiving is that it is the one holiday that all Americans, the patriotic and less so, can come together with family and friends to give thanks for what they have in their lives.

Recently this holiday tradition has come under strain. An estimated 27 to 30% of Americans are estranged from at least one family member. Differing political views are given as one reason many Americans have decided to sever ties. This prejudice also extends to friendship. Only one in five Americans report having a friend from the “other” side of the political spectrum, with people with Master’s degrees reporting having the fewest number of friends who politically disagree with them. This polarisation does not just impact our Thanksgiving meals. It is destroying the fabric of American society and straining democracy. Nearly half of the US electorate sees the opposing political side as “evil”.

This Thanksgiving it might behove all of us to contemplate that moment of humility the Pilgrims must have felt when Squanto first approached them with a plate of food. He was a “heathen” and somebody who must be converted to believe everything they believed, or he would burn in eternal damnation. And yet, Squanto reached out his hand.

Thanksgiving is often interpreted as a feast of thanks and abundance, but another way of seeing it is a celebration of the ultimate act of mercy.