Five Kernels of Corn

Thanksgiving

It's my favorite holiday of the year.

It celebrates my three favorite things:

Faith...

Family...and Food.

Notice that I didn't add Football.

Sorry...

Football just isn't one of my favorite things.

We are doubly thankful to have our two favorite college girls home for the week. If you've read here long, you know that everything takes a back seat when my girls come home from college. 

I love being surrounded by family.

Those Pilgrims of 1621 would probably
have loved it too.

That First Thanksgiving, however,
was not much of a family celebration.

Never mind the ones left behind across the ocean....

Did you know...

Of all the families aboard the Mayflower that year,

only the family of Stephen Hopkins

survived as a unit on that day

we call The First Thanksgiving?

And
did you know...

Only four of the wives

survived the winter?

Did you know...
That that first winter which took
half of the population
was not the worst season for the Pilgrims?


The miserable winter of 1623
 was followed by
 a summer drought.
That year was ever after called
The Starving Year.

They  subsisted on whatever shellfish
 they could catch by hand
 and rations of corn,

kernel by kernel...

(And we think we're living in tough times?)

On Forefather’s Day, 22^nd Dec. 1820,
they began the tradition of
rationing five kernels of corn
beside each plate
to remember
The Starving Year
and thank the God who carried them through it.

We heard the story and read the poem
 Five Kernels of Corn
when the girls were in elementary school.
Being one of *those* families,
we began adding five kernels of corn to
our Thanksgiving too.

This week,

instead of a tablescape for invisible people,

I'm sharing our actual

 Thanksgiving Eve dinner table

and the poem that inspired our Five Kernels of Corn.

( By the way....that  random fork in some pictures is the handiwork of a smart aleck husband protesting the absence of dessert. I was tempted to serve him five kernals of corn... )

Five Kernels of Corn

'Twas the year of the famine in Plymouth of old,

The ice and the snow from the thatched roofs had rolled;

Through the warm purple skies steered the geese o'er the seas,

And the woodpeckers tapped in the clocks of the trees;

And the boughs on the slopes to the south winds lay bare,

and dreaming of summer, the buds swelled in the air.

The pale Pilgrims welcomed each reddening morn;

There were left but for rations Five Kernels of Corn.

Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!

But to Bradford a feast were Five Kernels of Corn!

"Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye people, be glad for Five Kernels of Corn!"

So Bradford cried out on bleak Burial Hill,

And the thin women stood in their doors, white and still.

"Lo, the harbor of Plymouth rolls bright in the Spring,

The maples grow red, and the wood robins sing,

The west wind is blowing, and fading the snow,

And the pleasant pines sing, and arbutuses blow.

Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!

To each one be given Five Kernels of Corn!"

O Bradford of Austerfield hast on thy way,

The west winds are blowing o'er Provincetown Bay,

The white avens bloom, but the pine domes are chill,

And new graves have furrowed Precisioners' Hill!

"Give thanks, all ye people, the warm skies have come,

The hilltops are sunny, and green grows the holm,

And the trumpets of winds, and the white March is gone,

Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!

Ye have for Thanksgiving Five Kernels of Corn!

"The raven's gift eat and be humble and pray,

A new light is breaking and Truth leads your way;

One taper a thousand shall kindle; rejoice

That to you has been given the wilderness voice!"

O Bradford of Austerfi eld, daring the wave,

And safe through the sounding blasts leading the brave,

Of deeds such as thine was the free nation born,

And the festal world sings the "Five Kernels of Corn."

Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!

The nation gives thanks for Five Kernels of Corn!

Happy Thanksgiving!

*****

Sharing our Thanksgiving Eve table with  The Porch People for  Tablescape Thursday.