The Frontiersman

GIVING THANKS FOR PLENTIFUL HARVEST DATES BACK TO PAGAN CELEBRATIONS

The Pilgrims were joining some strange company when they declared a Thanksgiving celebration in 1621. For the practice of giving thanks for a plentiful harvest goes back almost to the time when man first gave up wandering and hitched himself to a plow.

Along the Mediterranean, ancient peoples held festivals at harvest time in honor of a mother goddess. The Semites called her Astarte, while the Phrygians named her Semele. The Romans honored Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, in a celebration called the Cerealia, reports World Book Encyclopedia. And the Greeks paid tribute to Demeter in secret rites called the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Christianity put an end to many of these festivals but a pagan inspired belief in the Corn Mother, or the Mother of Grains, survived among some peasants in the British Isles and Europe. Her spirit was thought to live in the last sheaf of grain left standing in the field.

In northern England, the last handful of corn was the "kirn," and sometimes it was fashioned into a "kirn doll." In Austria it was shaped into a wreath and placed on the head of a girl who became the harvest queen.

During the Middle Ages the most common thanksgiving and harvest festival was held on the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours, or Martinmas, on November 11. People throughout Europe still celebrate the day with feasts and new wine.

The Pilgrims probably became familiar with this celebration when they went to Holland to escape persecution in England, and it may have been the remembrance of this holiday that inspired them to hold a thanksgiving feast after their first prosperous year in the New World.