Welcome to a special, Thanksgiving 

Mega Comics Group Update!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is a very special MCG Blog update. We’ve never done this before. However, over the past 25 to 30 years we have seen attempts made by various groups to rewrite history. The truth is that which is closest to its source of origin. Therefore, to get the truth we have to study the earliest known documents as written without embellishment, exaggeration or misleading.

Mark’s Remarks

The Whole Truth About Thanksgiving

The story of the Pilgrims begins in the late 1600s, the seventeenth century, 300 years ago. These events were documented in a journal by William Bradford.

King James was persecuting all who did not recognize the absolute civil and spiritual authority of  The Church of England. Those who believed strongly in freedom of choice to worship as one felt lead in their own heart were imprisoned, and sometimes executed for the crime of heresy. A group of Puritans, separatists, whom would later be known as Pilgrims, people who wanted no part of The Church of England and its laws which made it illegal for anyone not to attend church services, banded together and traveled to Holland to established their own community.

However, all was not perfect in Holland. They lived in Leiden a bustling city of 100,000 inhabitants.  There was a language barrier and an educational barrier. Many found work but many more of the separatists had limited work experience and lacked training to find good paying jobs.  Nearly half of the original number agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, the new Continent, America, which they had heard so much about. A land where opportunity abounded to seek their fortunes as free men and most of all “live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, their beliefs and their desires.” But it was so far away, across the vast ocean. How would they ever make the long perilous journey? To these people it was worth the risk.

The Mayflower, after its long perilous journey, sets anchor in Plymouth Bay.

So on August 1, 1620, pooling all their resources, and with additional funding from merchant-sponsors in London, they set sail on a small ship, the Mayflower. It carried a total of 102 passengers, not all of them Pilgrims. The group of 40 Pilgrims was led by William Bradford. On the long journey there was much time to discuss and plan among the Pilgrims. Bradford proposed an agreement, a contract, for all the Pilgrims to agree to and sign, which would establish fair and equal laws for the whole new community. This agreement would not benefit or restrict anyone based on their religious beliefs. All would be treated equal. The contractual agreement would dictate behavior and consequences. This agreement was later called the Mayflower Compact.

Where did the revolutionary ideas for the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people dedicated to learning the lessons of how to live life from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. They were inspired by the ancient Israelites as their role models. This all comes from Williams Bradford’s journal. They were confident their experiment would work because they believed they were following the paradigm they saw in the Bible.

The Mayflower Compact, was a contract drawn up by William Bradford and the first Pilgrims. This document would later inspire the U.S. Constitution and other documents of the Founding Fathers.

This ocean voyage they were on was no pleasure cruise. It was a long and arduous journey. Imagine the bad relationships and problems on board a ship which was only about 100 feet long and less than half that in width, not much bigger than a Greyhound Bus, with 102 people aboard! One crew member and one passenger died before they reached land. A child was born at sea and named Oceanus. But they made it. They had to do it in ways that people would not travel today but they had no other choice. Think about it. Imagine the primitive forms of navigation, no radio or radar showing them any upcoming weather or conditions of the seas. But in spite of all, they made it.

Finally the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, in late Autumn with Winter bearing its fangs. According to Bradford’s detailed journal, their promised land was hardly anything to excite the senses, “…nothing a cold, barren, desolate, unsettled, wilderness.” There were no friends to greet them. Bradford wrote, “There were no houses…” There was no shelter of any kind, other than the trees. There was nothing that could be considered creature comforts whatsoever. There were no hotels. There were no bathrooms. There was no place they could refresh themselves. They had endured a long perilous journey by sea and yet the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. These were far from ideal conditions. They had to build a settlement and quickly as Winter was about to begin in earnest. 20 of them, half of the 40 Pilgrims who had made the long journey, including Bradford’s own wife — died of either starvation, sickness or exposure to the severe weather conditions. They endured the winter as best they could. When Spring finally came, the Indians,  Native Americans of the region, did welcome them.  They taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they were far from the prosperity they had dreamed of in coming to the New World, to America. This the point most current History teaching on the Pilgrims end. This is all the story of Thanksgiving current generations are taught. But there was much more to the story!

The Rest of the Story

 

The First Thanksgiving Feast, after losing half their original members, the Pilgrims eventually prospered and shared their wealth.

Thanksgiving, for these first Pilgrims was a devout expression of gratitude to God for their survival. There was a lot more to it than just the assistance by the Native Americans. An important part of the story has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into the Mayflower Compact and their merchant-sponsors in London. They had no money. They had to have people help them get here.The original contract called for everything they produced to go into a common store, a common account, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. Everything was to be divided up equally among everyone in the colony. It was fairness and it was equality. That included all of the land they cleared and the houses they built. It was ALL for the community,  not to the individual people personally. Nobody owned anything personally but all had goods, food and property in common. It was a commune. You would think this would be perfect and fair everyone having free and fair access to anything anyone else had. But they were still having a lot of problems and prosperity was still not to be had among them. They had enough to survive but not much, if any, more.

William Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this wasn’t working.  Like a standing pool of water there was nothing here but stagnation going on. Everybody was entitled to the same things. Everything was to be equally distributed, equal work and equal goods. But with no incentive some didn’t do their share, they didn’t won’t to contribute, so others had to pitch in to pick up the others slack. Everyone got the same amount as everybody else which led to accusations, jealousy and anger. Bradford saw he had to change things if they were to survive as a colony.

Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage. Whatever they produced was theirs and what they did not use, they could sell in the marketplace. The Pilgrims had  experimented with what could only be described as socialism, probably inspired by the account in the Bible from early chapters of the book of Acts where we read “And all that believed were together, and had all things common.” (Acts 2:44) However, this was a temporary and voluntary arrangement among the early Christians not meant to be institutionalized socialism. The Pilgrims, like those early Christians found out it didn’t work as a form of lasting government. But why not? It seems so fair to everyone?  What Bradford recounts in his journal is his community found that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than they had to. Why give something your all if you have little to nothing to show for it?  The Pilgrims found they had utilize the power of personal motivation to keep what they produced or earned as reward for their work. This also produced motivation to help those who could not work for themselves, widows and orphans, in need of more help.

The Pilgrims learned in less than a year something millions of people in the course of history have failed to recognize. The people of the world for hundreds of years have fallen for “leaders” who preach equal dispersement of all things as the most fair way for everyone to live. It may work as a temporary measure in the beginning but it is not meant to sustain and cannot sustain for the population as a whole. What Bradford wrote about in his journal, what these first Pilgrims learned, this social experiment failure and what turned it around, should be in every schoolchild’s history books and it use to be. Knowledge of this history has in the past prevented much needless suffering and can do so in the future, IF we know it and teach it. Bradford wrote, “The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For thiscommunity (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.”  They didn’t want to produce for other men’s families what other men should have providing for their own. Eventually this was thought of as a great injustice, being pressed into service for the cause of others which was essentially what they had in England from which they had fled. Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself?

The Bradford Journal, Of Plymouth Plantation is the title of the diary record of the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. “This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious.”  In other words they got off their butts and started working. Ironically, as they worked and did for themselves it benefited the entire community.  “Much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” After their long journey, enduring many hardships physically and then from their own best intentions and failing, they at last began to experience prosperity. It was at this point in the true story, according to the Bradford journal, they welcomed the Native Americans in, because there was so much production they shared it with them as well as themselves. They had so much more than they needed, so much a wealth and bounty of produce that they, in gratitude for the abundant harvest of the Summer and Autumn and entering into the next Winter shared with the Native Americans who had helped them.

So the original Thanksgiving was to give thanks to God for the enlightenment, the courage, the fortitude to withstand all of the hardship to finally prosper in their dream, in their Promised Land. The Pilgrims set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Native Americans,  the Indians. The profits from their bounty allowed them to pay off the debts to their sponsors, the merchants in London and Holland who helped bankroll the whole endeavor. The success of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the Great Puritan Migration and spawned to massive additional trips from many nations to settle colonies in the New World, America. Their sacrifice and ultimate victory benefited the whole world.

To sum it all up, the Pilgrims were inspired by what they saw in the Bible and the ancient Hebrews as a pattern for them to follow in seeing their freedom, prosperity and practice their beliefs in God according to the convictions in their hearts rather than be subservient to what a tyranny dictated they should do or what they could be. A people who had  faith in God survived all manner of obstacles and ultimately prospered. They experimented with many plans which seemed fair but led to more hardship before learning the wisdom of how to accomplish true fairness. That was the original reason for their trip in the first place. And for all of that they were eternally thankful to God who inspired them and led them and enabled them to ultimately succeed. That is the whole story of Thanksgiving.

Onward! – Mark

P.S. Okay, even  though this is the whole over all story there are still a lot of details to each section I left out due to space restraints. Check out the sources below for more details. Enjoy!