c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) With its celebration of bounty and goodwill, not to mention its endearing lack of commercialization, Thanksgiving may be the most beloved of American holidays.

But is the Thanksgiving Americans celebrate today mere myth-making, resting on ahistorical stereotypes?

Take the fabled turkey, for example. Did it even inhabit eastern Massachusetts in 1621? And the much-venerated Thanksgiving meal: was it a bountiful celebration of fraternal cooperation or more a series of “backwoods diplomatic encounters” to ease tensions between the new English arrivals and the long-established Algonquian-speaking residents?

If you answered “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second _ the first Thanksgiving meal more likely incorporated raccoon stew than cranberry sauce _ you may think you know where British author and journalist Godfrey Hodgson is taking readers in his new book, “A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving” published by PublicAffairs.

But in fact, Hodgson’s aim is not so much in correcting the historical record as in affectionately exploring the ways a beloved national celebration with strong religious undercurrents has reinvented itself over time.

And indeed, as Hodgson makes clear, Thanksgiving has always expressed “deep religious impulses.”

“Christians recognize in it an echo of the breaking of bread that is at the heart of their observance,” he writes, “while Jews have often seen it as a kind of seder, in that it commemorates, by a shared meal, a journey toward salvation.”

Hodgson, 72, lives in Great Britain and is currently an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute. He makes it abundantly clear, both in the book and in person, that he loves Thanksgiving.

“It’s a quiet celebration,” Hodgson said recently in an interview in New York City to promote the book, “but it’s inclusive, and it’s been terribly important in American history.”

While Hodgson acknowledges that he is “quite braced” for criticism that his book merely seeks to debunk familiar myths, he hopes readers and critics see beyond the gentle poking of the familiar lore of turkeys and pumpkin pies and see the affection that underlines “A Great and Godly Adventure.”

Hodgson’s long record of critical scholarship and reporting have given Americans a fresh view of their history. He acknowledges he has “quite a bit of admiration for the Pilgrims. They were extraordinary people.”

But they were not, he argues, the nation’s “forefathers” or the precursors to the Founding Fathers. They did not actually call themselves Pilgrims and never saw themselves as anything but religious separatists from rural England who arrived in the New World by way of Holland, tired of the religious divisions that marked 16th and 17th century England and Europe.

They did not, Hodgson argues, seek to colonize what eventually became Massachusetts but merely wanted to establish an English church “in their own way,” refusing to bow before “the worldly authority of kings or bishops.”

As strict Protestants, they were more apt to fast than feast _ which is why Hodgson argues the first actual Thanksgiving was a solemn commemoration of the end of a six-week drought than a bountiful meal. Hardly the stuff, he said, of “heroic mythmaking.”

“A sober meeting to give thanks for the rain isn’t as much fun as a feast,” he writes.

Hodgson argues the later meals of thanksgiving, as opposed to a formal “Thanksgiving,” emerged as the English arrivals tried, often uneasily, to establish relations with their Indian neighbors and as both groups reaffirmed their respective harvest celebrations.

Eventually, what later became a New England celebration called “Forefathers Day” emerged as a national celebration of thanks. It did not become institutionalized until Abraham Lincoln, displaying what Hodgson calls the president’s dual traits of “moral prophet” and “shrewd politician,” declared Thanksgiving a national holiday _ partly to boost civilian morale during the final years of the Civil War.

Not to be outdone, and overriding suspicions that “Forefathers Day” was a Yankee celebration, Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared a similar day of Thanksgiving for the Southern states, “devoted to the worship of Almighty God.”

In the years since, Thanksgiving has incorporated the traditions of new immigrants, be they Eastern Europeans a century ago or Latin Americans today. Today, in many of America’s urban neighborhoods, turkey is more likely to be accompanied by Mexican mole sauce than oyster stuffing.

There is even now room for protests by those who argue that the holiday represents the domination of European culture over Native American life. For more than 30 years, Native Americans have gathered in Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving and marked it as a day of mourning. In that respect, Hodgson said, Native Americans have “reclaimed a place” at the Thanksgiving table _ a demonstration of Thanksgiving’s continual re-invention.

If Thanksgiving is an example of what some historians have called “the invention of tradition” _ the ways in which nations affirm events that are more mythical than real _ count Godfrey Hodgson as one of its supporters.

“One can deconstruct the idea of Thanksgiving as much as one likes,” he writes. Nonetheless, he said, it remains “not a hymn to battle or violence, not a festival of national pride and superiority, but a domestic celebration of gratitude, humility, and inclusiveness.”

“These are not qualities,” he said, “for which anyone need apologize.”

KRE/JL END HERLINGEREditors: To obtain photos of Godfrey Hodgson and the cover of “A Great and Godly Adventure,” go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.