Le Jour de L'action de Grace

I think it would be "false pretenses", if you will, if this blog did not include some French once in a while. So, along with some history on Thanksgiving (because who really remembers what they were taught about the Indians and Pilgrims back in Elementary school?), I will be doling out a little holiday-oriented French vocabulary! :)

THE HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING:

THE PILGRIMS
A pilgrim is someone who journeys, usually a far distance, to a place as an act of religious devotion. In this case, the pilgrims were Puritans who were being repressed from practicing their religion. They ventured forth on the Mayflower in order to make a better life where they could worship freely. Thanksgiving, to them, meant a religious holiday of giving thanks to God, usually given to fasting- not feasting.

WHERE THE HOLIDAY CAME FROM
Our current tradition combines this Puritan tradition of giving thanks, and European as well as Native American traditions of celebrating a good harvest. We celebrate a Thanksgiving after the 1621 harvest celebration the Pilgrims had in Massachusetts, sometime between September 21 and November 11 and was three days long (agreeing with European harvest festivals). During the American Revolution, a national holiday of thanksgiving was suggested to the Continental Congress, and by the mid-1800s, many states -starting with New York- had adopted the custom. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who, in 1939, proposed the holiday should be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

THE FOOD
Nowadays, the traditional food associated with Thanksgiving is turkey, pumpkin pie, and mashed potatoes. Other common dishes served include stuffing, gravy, pecan pie, and cranberry sauce. The original harvest included a very different menu; historians suggest the pilgrims and indians supped over seafood (yep! like cod, eel, lobster, and oysters), nuts (chestnuts, acorns, and walnuts), venison (deer meat), indian corn, raw pumpkin, other vegetables, and different kinds of wild fowl (yes, turkey included). They ate many different kinds of meats. But pies and cranberry sauce? Nope.

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE
As far as the buildings, the pilgrims had only built seven houses, a common meeting place, and three storehouses for food and supplies. In preparation for the meals, one person would be assigned to sit for a period of hours to make sure the meat was cooked evenly over the spit (meat was commonly roasted). As for their dress, the pilgrims wore earthy tones of green, brown, gray, black, and beige. The women also wore violets, reds, and blues. The buckles we usually imagine they wore didn't even come into style until decades later. The Natives they celebrated with were of the Wampanoag tribe, along with their leader, Massasoit. The two communities ate both together separately over the few days of celebration, dining both indoors and outdoors at one time. Between meals, there was singing and dancing, as well as games.

Of course, even if the Pilgrims did not consider their meal a thanksgiving, they did give thanks. And when you're enjoying bountiful food with friends and family, how can you not be thankful?

And now, some French vocabulary ;)

Pilgrims - les pèlerins (lay peh-ler-eh)
Indians - les Indiens (lay in-dyen)
settler - un colonisateur (uh coh-lohn-ees-ah-tur)
feast - un festin (uh fest-eh)
thankful - reconnaissant (reck-on-ay-sahnt)
harvest - la récolte (lah ray-colt)

pumpkin pie - la tarte à la citrouille (lah tart ah lah sit-troo-ee)
stuffing - la farce (la farss)
turkey - la dinde (lah deend)

Thank you very much - Merci beaucoup (mare-see boh-coo)