Thanksgiving at Plymouth
By Fr. Peter Fennessy, SJ
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, (detail) Thanksgiving at Plymouth (1925), oil on canvas, original 30 × 39.13 inches, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Colonists in New England and Canada regularly celebrated days of prayer and thanksgiving. Jennie Augusta Brownscombe’s “Thanksgiving at Plymouth” depicts Plymouth Colony’s first harvest feast in 1621, often thought to be the origin of our Thanksgiving. Although Native Americans attended this celebration, Brownscombe may have been making a point when she huddled them together so far to the side. Thanksgiving is not a happy feast for Native Americans.
Christians believe gratitude is appropriate every day. Each day at the Eucharist (Greek for “thanksgiving”) most Prefaces begin, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give You thanks, Father most holy, through Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ.” Saint Paul writes, “In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Saint Ignatius, in the final Contemplation of his Spiritual Exercises, says that all things around and within us are gifts from God, for which we ought to be grateful. For Ignatius, ingratitude was the greatest of all sins. We should make our own the prayer of Dag Hammarskjöld that begins, “For all that has been—Thanks!”