AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR, IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE PREMIERE OF THE PILGRIM PROGRESS EVENT, YOU 'LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL AUGUST. I WAS PART OF IT IN THE PAST, AND IT IS WORTH THE WAIT
Although it is now too late to observe the Thanksgiving reenactment of The Pilgrim Progress march in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, you and your family can observe this historic event on Friday evenings this coming August. You might consider putting it on your calendar!
It is one of the best reasons for being in Plymouth, as our family and I were several years ago, as the 51 surviving Mayflower ship’s passengers marched through town on their way to church services to give thanks for their small group being able to survive that first winter of 1620.
Participants, all in costumes right out of the classic old paintings, rendered on the events that took place in Plymouth in 1621, meander through downtown Plymouth and terminate their journey at Burial Hill, slightly west of the town’s waterfront business district and the canopied resting place of Plymouth Rock.
Back in the early days of The Pilgrim Progress, the Pilgrim reenactment event was met with heavy confrontations from area Wampanoag Natives and their associates and allies. It was not until the mid-1970s that the two sides came together and agreed to hold two separate Pilgrim Progress marches: one in the morning by the Pilgrims and the other at noon on Coles Hill by the Natives.
The Natives call their procession their commemoration of A National Day of Mourning held on Thanksgiving Day. Many Natives do not observe the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day, as it was initially designated by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.
They begin their walk at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth Center to remind spectators and the world that they will never celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and the following masses of settlers from Europe and elsewhere.
The Natives say that Thanksgiving is a time of genocide of millions of Native people, the stealing of Native lands, and the near disappearance of Native rituals. They maintain that Natives marching in the National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving Day is to commemorate a day of protest against racism that the Native people continue to experience throughout the world.
The other Pilgrim Progress, while traveling the downtown streets of Plymouth, marches up the narrow ways of Leyden Street to School Street, where a Pilgrim worship is held close to the location of the old fort and meeting house.
After the service, the march proceeds through the center of town and finally ends at the Mayflower Society House. According to a participant in the first celebration in 1621, Pilgrim Edward Winslow, “many of the Indians came and amongst them, their great king Massasoit, with some ninety men.”
So, with all 53 survivors, Massasoit and 90 of his friends, it was indeed a special event and became known as “First Thanksgiving in Plymouth.” Artwork depicting that first Thanksgiving gathering is well known throughout the world. It was painted by American artist Jennie August Brownscombe in 1914, and the original hangs in Plymouth Hall in Plymouth, a few miles from where my family and I once lived in nearby Kingston.
I have seen this painting many times, and it is a beautiful, romantic (but probably not accurate) rendering of that day in Plymouth when the Natives and the new settlers came together for a meal.
Some stories or attendant recollections of those early Thanksgiving dinners told of meals that probably included no turkey, but a lot of other “fowl” (including pigeons), lobsters, clams, mussels, corn, nuts, pumpkin, squash, and venison.
When we lived in the town next to Plymouth, our kids requested a Thanksgiving seafood dinner one year, and we cooked some of the early parts of that meal. They thought, as youngsters, it would be neat to actually have a Thanksgiving dinner just like the one that was prepared and consumed back in 1621.
So, we caught fish, dug clams, picked a bunch of mussels, and bought lobsters for our own personal family “Traditional Feast.” It was an interesting experiment; we cooked it all outdoors on a pleasant November day, making believe it was back in the early days of the Plymouth settlers and their Native friends.
We had no early arrivals in Plymouth to invite, nor did we have 90 Wampanoag Natives over for our feast. Still, we had a splendid repast that could have been somewhat historically accurate right down to the cranberries we picked from a next-door cranberry bog.
As you might imagine, Thanksgiving in “America’s Home Town” is very popular in that area of Massachusetts and is celebrated each year around the fourth Thursday of November by thousands of tourists and visitors.
Tourists especially enjoyed the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Mayflower Society families who walk from the waterfront location of the replica ship “Mayflower” and up the heights of land at Burial Hill.
Here in these small New Hampshire towns of the Northcountry, where I am sure a form of Thanksgiving has been held since the towns were founded in the early 1760s, families will continue to gather as usual and enjoy their turkey, venison, and all the fixings, topped off with pumpkin pie.
Hunters made sure their families had plenty of venison, and the pumpkins grown on Piermont meadowlands are even more plentiful than when the Natives and local farmers were on these same lands at the time of the Pilgrim landings in Plymouth 404 years ago.
There were no local high school Thanksgiving Day football games to attend here like we had when I was a young boy in school back in Winchester, Massachusetts. But there would have been a walk in the woods or probably a short nap.
I often think about how different it was back then and how hugely wonderful it all is now, putting aside the politics and being pleased that the opposing forces down at Plymouth have reduced some of their hard feelings, and that each can now hold their own version of The Pilgrim Progress.

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