Four Double Nine-Patches

I spent a chunk of last week studying about the first Thanksgiving to prepare a lesson for young adults. Most of what I read was like a fifth grade refresher course: the Puritans were a radical faction of the Church of England that fled to the Netherlands where practicing their faith wasn’t against the law. (Holland is still an “Anything Goes” sort of place.) They suffered economic hardship there, and were afraid their children wouldn’t grow up “English,” so they joined a London Stock company to finance their journey on the merchant ship Mayflower. The trip took twice as long as they’d expected, and their first winter was unlike anything any of them had experienced. Half of them never lived to see the spring. The Old World peas and barley they brought wouldn’t grow in the Americas. If not for the help of the Wamanoag tribe, there would have been little to be thankful for that autumn.