Debunking Thanksgiving Myths at Plimoth Plantation
Most of the myths about Thanksgiving were created whole cloth by the Victorians.
Not to mention that Plymouth Rock is a lot smaller than everyone thinks it is. The story of the Rock is rather odd. It was once more than twice as big and was in the middle of a Plymouth wharf. People walked over it every day and no one paid it any mind, until one day circa the mid-1800s they were planning to demolish the wharf and get rid of the rock. An very elderly man protested, saying his grandfather had told him that it had been handed down in his family that this is the rock the Pilgrims had used to "step down" from the Mayflower. ::cough:: They actually came ashore in smaller craft.
Since it would be terrible to destroy this historical artifact, they attempted to pull the rock out of the wharf area. It broke in half. They transported the part that broke off to a prominent place and labeled it Plymouth Rock. Then for years Victorian tourists were allowed to chip little bits off it as souvenirs. Finally they decided to mount a permanent and protective monument around it. They moved the stone again and it broke again. This time they glued it back together and put it in the little enclosure that it's in today.
And that's the story of Plymouth Rock! :-)
2 comments:
I recently read an interesting article in The World Encyclopedia of Christmas (2000) by Gerry Bowler, which discusses the 19th century transformation of St. Nicholas to the "familiar" figure of the rotund, chimney-hopping, pipe-smoking Santa Claus. I'm including the salient excerpts, here, because it's an interesting parallel to the Plymouth Rock mythos--
"In much of the United States of the late 1700s, Christmas was a time of boisterous, outdoor fun; drinking was a major part of the season...During the first half of the 19th century, Christmas would be remade; collective rowdiness and social inversion were replaced by a child-centred, family-oriented holiday that rendered the streets safer and the merchants happier. Central to this important social change was the invention of Santa Claus by a small group of New York men of letters."
"To some in the newly independent United States things Dutch were symbols of anti-British republicanism. St. Nicholas had been a rebel symbol in New York during the Revolutionary War, and with tensions still running high in the early years of the 19th century he would be useful again. In 1809 American writer Washington Irving wrote a mock chronicle entitled Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York in which he claimed that the early Dutch settlers revered Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas, who visited every December. He was widely believed to ride a horse and wagon through the skies, slide down chimneys with presents, and smoke a pipe. Irving seems to have invented this Dutch-American attachment to St. Nick...the next year George Pintard, another member of the "Knickerbocker" group, published a pamphlet in Dutch and English showing picture of St. Nicholas dressed as a bishop, presents stuffed into stockings by a fireplace, a good child with treats, and a bad child with a switch. The verse read, in part:
Saint Nicholas, my dear good friend!
To serve you, ever was my end,
If you will, now, me something give,
I'll serve you ever while I live.
"A couple of weeks later another poem, this time anonymously written, appeared in a New York newspaper praising "Sancte Claus" for the gifts he brings, asking him to spare the rod, and promising, "From naughty behavior we'll always refrain,In hopes you'll come and reward us again."
"Within two years this newly minted legend of Santa Claus has spread far enough to provoke an attempt to disprove his existence. In 1812 Samuel Woods, in his False Stories Corrected, tried to debunk "Old Santa Claw, of whom so often little children hear such foolish stories." But already the myth was too powerful. By 1822 two more poems would be added to the Santa Claus canon that fleshed out his personality and helped ensure his survival in American Christmas Celebrations. The first appeare in an 1821 book entitled The Childrens' Friend. In this poem we see very important elements of the development of Santa Claus: his connection with the northern winter; the reindeer and sleigh; his arrival, no on his saint's day, but on Christmas Eve; as well as the traditional carrot-and-stick approach to children's behaviour.
"In 1822 a poem entitled "A Visit From Saint Nicholas," destined to be known popularly as "The Night Before Christmas," further elaborated on the nature of Santa Claus....Moore's poem became widely known in the United States, and Santa Claus was soon adopted as the figurehead of a new sort of Christmas - more domestic and less boisterous, focused on December 24 and 25 instead of December 6 or 31, and capable of generating revenue for the merchants who began using Santa in their advertising....
Rod Brock
Hi, Rod--
I have Bowler's Encyclopedia--great volume! If you are interested in more Christmas history, there's The Battle for Christmas by Nissenbaum (lots more about that "boisterous outdoor fun"!) and Christmas in America by Restad.
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