(soft music) Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I am excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well families, happy Thanksgiving. I can hardly believe that the week of Thanksgiving is here. This year has flown by for me and my family, and I suspect it has done the same thing for you.

And as we approach the holiday this week, I've got a couple of questions for you and your family to consider. I have a poem to share with you, I have a story to share with you, and I have a passage from scripture to share with you. As we prepare our hearts to be truly thankful, I wanna ask you, and maybe, maybe you will choose to listen to this podcast this week as a family, maybe as you road trip to a relative's house or to the beach or to the mountains to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family.

And if you are all together in the car listening to this podcast, maybe you'll stop the recording and talk together about some of the questions that I'm gonna ask you. Here's the first one. What does Thanksgiving mean to your family? Now moms and dads, you might want to take this opportunity to share some stories of Thanksgiving when you were a little girl or when you were a little boy and give your kids a picture of what Thanksgivings were like when you were young, when you were growing up.

Did you go to your grandparents' home? Was that in the city? Was that in the country? Has your family always celebrated a traditional American Thanksgiving? Or is that something new for your family? Do you have other traditions associated with Thanksgiving that maybe many of us don't share but that are very important to your family?

What are you being thankful for? What do you do together as a family to celebrate? When you gather to visit and to eat, what is your family? What are you and your friends truly celebrating? For the early settlers in this new world, here's maybe something surprising. Thanksgiving was not always about abundance.

That's right. Thanksgiving was not always about abundance. In fact, listen to this poem by Hezekiah Butterworth. And it's going to remind us that in the beginning, maybe Thanksgiving was about something else. See if you, as you listen, can discover what these Plymouth settlers were called to give thanks for.

The title of the poem is "Five Colonels 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 or 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 snow. 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 woodrobins sing. The west wind is blowing and fading the snow and the pleasant pines sing and the Arbutus' blow. Five kernels of corn, five kernels of corn to each one be given five kernels of corn. Oh Bradford of Austerfield hast on thy way.

The west winds are blowing o'er Provincetown Bay. The white havens 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 home 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 ravens gift eat and be humble and pray. A new light is breaking and truth leads the way. One taper, a thousand shall kindle. Rejoice that to you has been given the wilderness voice.

Oh Bradford of Austerfield daring the wave and safe through the sounding blasts leading the brave. A deed 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.

To the thanksgiving feast, bring five kernels of corn. You see thanksgiving might be a season and not always in the fall. These settlers celebrated in this poem, you can tell by the wording, they were celebrating the coming of spring, coming warmth and a chance, another chance, a new chance to grow food.

They celebrated in this poem not abundance but survival with five kernels of corn. And it was a call to remember not abundance but enough and the fact that through the providence of God, they had survived. So what will you and your family be thankful for this season? Think about what are your basics that keep your family going?

These Plymouth settlers were not celebrating abundance, they were celebrating the just barely enough. They were celebrating what kept their hearts hopeful and their bodies alive. So what are the basics that keep your family going? And if you want to read that poem again, you can find it in Words Aptly Spoken American Documents.

I also want to share a story for you. It's called The First Thanksgiving. It is by Albert Blaisdell and Francis Ball and it is one of the stories that you can find in New World Echoes. So if you want to use this like a read aloud, you can just listen.

But if you'd like for it to be a follow along, you can find this story in New World Echoes on page 171. It's called The First Thanksgiving. All through the first summer and the early part of autumn, the pilgrims were happy and busy. They had planted and cared for their first fields of corn.

They had found wild strawberries in the meadows, raspberries on the hillsides and wild grapes in the woods. In the forest, just back of the village, wild turkeys and deer were easily shot. In the shallow waters of the bay, there was plenty of fish, clams and lobsters. The summer had been warm with a good deal of rain and much sunshine and so when the autumn came, there was a fine crop of corn.

Let us gather the fruits of our first labors and rejoice together, said Governor Bradford. Yes, said Elder Brewster, let us take a day upon which we may thank God for all our blessings and invite to it our Indian friends who have been so kind to us. The pilgrims said that one day was not enough so they planned to have a celebration for a whole week.

This took place most likely in October. The great Indian chief, Massasoit, came with 90 of his bravest warriors, all gaily dressed in deer skins, feathers and fox tails with their faces smeared with red, white and yellow paint. As a sign of rank, Massasoit wore around his neck a string of bones and a bag of tobacco.

In his belt, he carried a long knife. His face was painted red and his hair was so daubed with oil that Governor Bradford said he looked greasily. Now, there were only 11 buildings in the whole of Plymouth Village, four log storehouses and seven little log dwelling houses. So the Indian guests ate and slept out of doors.

This was no matter, for it was one of those warm weeks in the season we call now Indian summer. To supply meat for the occasion, four men had already been sent out to hunt wild turkeys. They killed enough in one day to last the whole company almost a week.

Massasoit helped the feast along by sending some of his best hunters into the woods. They killed five deer, which they gave to their pale face friends that all might have enough to eat. Under the trees were built long, rude tables on which were piled baked clams, broiled fish, roast turkey and deer meat.

The young pilgrim women helped serve the food to the hungry Redskins. Let us remember two of the fair girls who waited on the tables. One was Mary Chilton who leaped from the boat at Plymouth Rock. The other was Mary Allerton. She lived for 78 years after this first Thanksgiving and those who came over in the Mayflower, of those, she was the last to die.

What a merry time everybody had during that week. It may be they joked Governor Bradford about stepping into a deer trap set by the Indians and being jerked up by the leg. How the women must have laughed as they told about the first Monday morning at Cape Cod when they all went ashore to wash their clothes.

It must have been a big washing for there had been no chance to do it at sea so stormy had been the long voyage of 63 days. They little thought that Monday would afterward be kept as wash day. Then there was young John Howland who in mid ocean fell overboard but was quick enough to catch hold of a trailing rope.

Perhaps after dinner he invited Elizabeth Tilley whom he afterward married to sail over to Clark's Island and returned by moonlight. With them it may be went John Alden and Priscilla Mullins whose love story is so sweetly told by the poet Longfellow. One proud mother we may be sure showed her bright eyed boy peregrine white.

And so the fun went on. In the daytime the young men ran races, played games and had a shooting match. Every night the Indians sang and danced for their friends and to make things still more lively they gave every now and then a shrill war whoop that made the woods echo in the still night air.

The Indians had already learned to love and fear Captain Miles Standish. Some of them called him boiling water because he was easily made angry. Others called him Captain Shrimp on account of his small size. Every morning the shrewd captain put on his armor and paraded his little company of a dozen or more soldiers and when he fired off the cannon on Burial Hill the Indians must have felt that the English were men of might thus to harness up thunder and lightning.

During this week of fun and frolic it was a wonder if young Jack Billington did not play some prank on the Indians. He was the boy who fired off his father's gun one day close to a keg of gunpowder in the crowded cabin of the Mayflower. The third day came.

Massa Soyet had been well treated and no doubt would have liked to stay longer but he had said he could stay only three days so the pipe of peace was silently passed around. Then taking their presence of glass beads and trinkets the Indian king and his warriors said farewell to their English friends and began their long tramp through the woods to their wigwams on Mount Hope Bay.

On the last day of this Thanksgiving party the pilgrims had a service of prayer and praise. Elder Brewster preached the first Thanksgiving sermon. After thanking God for all his goodness he did not forget many loved ones sleeping on the hillside. He spoke of noble John Carver the first governor who had died of worry and overwork.

Nor was Rose Standish forgotten, the lovely young wife of Captain Miles Standish whose death was caused by cold and lack of good food. And then there was gentle Dorothy, wife of Governor Bradford who had fallen overboard from the Mayflower in Provincetown Harbor while her husband was coasting along the bleak shore in search of a place for a home.

The first Thanksgiving took place nearly 300 years ago. And since that time almost without interruption Thanksgiving has been kept by the people of New England as the great family festival of the year. At this time children and grandchildren returned to the old home, the long table is spread and brothers and sisters separated often by many miles again set side by side.

Today Thanksgiving is observed in nearly all the states of the union, a season of sweet and blessed memories. And this story you can read again in the Copper Lodge Library book, New World Echoes. It's called The First Thanksgiving. Now you probably noticed toward the end I mentioned, well, I read in the story it said the first Thanksgiving took place nearly 300 years ago.

And those of you who are really good at mental math are probably thinking that number seems way off to me. And you're right, but here's the thing. This story was written by Albert Blaisdell and Francis Ball in 1915. So they counted from 1915 back to the very first Thanksgiving and we are more than 100 years ahead of that telling.

So what do you think about that story? Where do the details come from? There are journals that give some of the perspective of some of the people who lived in the colony and participated in that first Thanksgiving. There are lots of things that happened in that first Thanksgiving that probably do not happen in any of the celebrations that you're a part of.

You might play games outside, but I bet that they're not shooting matches. They probably pick up football games. You probably have really good things to eat, but not a lot of people have roasted clams on their Thanksgiving table. You have many things to be thankful for, but they are probably different things than those of the first Thanksgiving participants.

So here's something for you to think about with your family. For what are we thankful? And you know what? It's easy to just say, oh, I'm thankful for my mom and for my dad and for my home and for my bed and for good food. Let this Thanksgiving be a real time for you to reflect not only on the things that you are thankful for, but the people for whom you are thankful and the intangibles like safety and freedom and love and hope that you may also celebrate.

So think about this with your family. How do we show our thanks? As little kids, most of us are taught to say thank you and please to express thanks for a good meal by saying, when I was a little girl, I always had to say before I was excused, may I be excused?

I enjoyed it after every meal, even when I did not truly enjoy it, okay? So many of us give thanks verbally, but how else do we express our thanks? What attitude can we show that speaks thanks? What words of, what deeds of service might we do that could express our thanks?

To whom are we thankful? Maybe you are thankful this season for another family member who has blessed you or served you in some way. I suspect that upon deep reflection, we are all thankful to the Lord and it might be a great exercise as a family to think about what are you thankful to the Lord for in this day, in this week, in this month, in this season, in this year?

So one thing that we saw in this story, the first Thanksgiving, was that the settlers, the early settlers wanted to share the spirit of Thanksgiving not just with their neighbors who had come with them over on the Mayflower, but with the new friends that they had made in the new world.

So how is sharing a part of saying thanks? Many of us celebrate Thanksgiving with family members that we don't see often or that at least we don't see every day. Maybe you have a Thanksgiving ceremony with your neighbors or with your church family or even with your CC community.

How does sharing help us say thanks? And here's another, here's another thought. Are we only thankful for our happy times? Are we only thankful for the good things that we see in our lives? How can God lead us to grow into becoming thankful for the hard times and the trying circumstances?

In what ways can we become thankful for those? What do those things offer us that cause us to grow in our understanding of the Lord and our appreciation for all He does for us? How can remembering hard times bring us a spirit of gratitude? So I ask you, talk with your family, what are you remembering this year and how can you honor those memories?

As we end our time together on the podcast today, the Giving Thanks podcast, I want to share with you a Psalm. I think it might be the first long passage that I ever memorized as a second grader. And it resonates with me sometimes in the night, sometimes during joyful times, but also during hard times.

The Psalm 100 calls me to be thankful and I hope it will call you to be thankful. Psalm 100, shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we are His.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name, for the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. The Lord is worthy of our praise and our truest measure of thanks belongs to Him.

For the Lord is good, His love endures forever and His faithfulness continues through all generations. Happy Thanksgiving, you guys, and I will look forward to celebrating Advent with you when we meet again. And hey, before we go, if you're traveling for Thanksgiving, maybe you're traveling when you hear this, I wonder if you know that there are other classical conversations, podcasts that you might enjoy.

If you're a mom looking for parenting tips or stories of encouragement or just some fun, honest conversation about the ups and downs of motherhood with moms at all stages, then you need to join Delice and Jenny, they are the hosts of Blessings and Motherhood. These are really fun, thoughtful episodes packed with lots of insights and book recommendations and stories, they're just a lot of fun.

Delice and Jenny are fun to listen to. And if you are interested in current events or politics or culture or classical education and how your Christianity relates to all these topics, you need to check out Refining Rhetoric with Robert Bortons. On this show, Robert, who is the CEO of Classical Conversations, Robert guides listeners using the 15 classical tools of learning to navigate current events and critical issues.

He has really interesting guests every podcast and I think you would really enjoy listening to this. If either of these sounds up your alley, you can listen to both of these shows on your favorite podcast streaming app or you can go to their own website so you can check out blessingsandmotherhood.com and refiningrhetoric.com.

Two more great podcasts for y'all to get a part of. So thanks for being with me today. Happy Thanksgiving and I'll see you next time. Bye bye. (gentle music) you