Thanksgiving

Hello, Beautiful Homemakers!  This is the perfect time to decorate or clean your house while listening to Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving:

It's also a great week to think about printing out your Christmas card list and gathering supplies, and to buy Christmas stamps while you mail long-distance package. 

For those who are interested, remember that Laine's service will be streamed on FB on Friday 11/22 at 1 pm PST. 

 

Plan your menu and which dishes will hold what food.  Write a little list that you can keep in a homemaking binder to reuse year after year.  I have little index cards that I’ve cut into fourths that have the name of the food on it, to be placed on the correct dish the night before so that I do not forget to make something, or do not forget to take something out of the fridge that day.

A typical Thanksgiving menu (for my non-American readers who don't know):

• Turkey
• Mashed Potatoes and gravy
• Green beans
• Corn
• Cranberry Sauce
• Dressing (aka Stuffing)
• Rolls
• Pumpkin bread
• Pumpkin pie

   

Reach out and invite someone new to share your table.  Don't worry about the house being perfectly clean, or about not having pinterest-worthy table settings.  Just use your best china and make it festive and joyful.  

This is a day of rejoicing!  A day of gratitude and thankfulness.  A day of blessing others while sharing food.  Remember, it is not about what is on the table, but WHO is sitting in the chairs!

 

 Have a Joyful Thanksgiving!  Don't get overwhelmed, just do a little each day.  

 

Here’s my list of what to do in the days before company arrives:

• Set up children’s table
• Set out food dishes and utensils with notecards for dish name
• Make sure china is washed and clean and any silver is polished
• Porch swept; porch light cleaned of cobwebs
• Clean bathrooms
• Mop
• Dust
• Vacuum
• Clear up the clutter and paper piles
• Help child clean his room (okay, not any more, but in the olden days)
• Meal prep such as making a salad, chopping vegetables for stuffing, etc.

 

The morning of:

• Make beds
• New towels in bathroom
• New towels in kitchen
• Trash cans emptied
• Set main table and child’s table
• Chill water, make sure there is ice, set up drink station
• Start the dinner (peel the potatoes early and keep them in water until ready to boil)

• ME! Be dressed in something nice in case neighbors drop in, have make-up done and jewelry on.

• An hour before company is expected get dressed, and wear an apron to prevent a clothing disaster.

 Don’t forget to do easy crafts, such as tracing your hand and your child’s hand and making it into a turkey. You can do this with everyone, and have people sign their name under their hand, and list at least one thing they are thankful for. I did this one year when my grandparents and dad were still alive, and I’m so glad that I took the time.

 

You can also write what you are thankful for on paper leaves and hang them up on your dining room wall.

 

One year we stuck colored feathers into a pine cone and made a little turkey head for it. So cute! 

 

The first Thanksgiving Proclamation

The following is the first Thanksgiving Proclamation made by Governor William Bradford in 1623, three years after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth in Massachusetts. (Which, by the way, they did not name. It was on their map, which was made by Capt. John Smith of Jamestown and sold in England. My 1888 book Pilgrims and Puritans by N. Moore on page 45 says, “Prince Charles had called this part of the shore Plymouth. The Pilgrims did not change the name.” It shows a map with Plymouth Bay, and “Patuxet or New Plimoth” on land. This was one of the most interesting books I’ve read about the Pilgrims – it has many quotes from first-hand hand-written manuscripts.)

 

“To all ye Pilgrims:

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; so I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. ~ William Bradford, Ye Governor of Ye Colony.”

 

I encourage you to print out the above proclamation, and also to watch with your family A Charlie Brown This is America, The Mayflower Voyagers special, which is in the public domain and can be viewed in full at Archive.org or by clicking the link above. 

 One other thing that we do, right before we pray for the meal, is read Psalm 100.  We have a large KJV Bible from the 1800s on a podium in our dining room, so this is what we read from:

(A Psalm of praise.) 1. Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.

2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Happy Thanksgiving, my American friends! I hope you know what YOU are serving on Thanksgiving Day, and that you won’t stress, but have fun, and let it be what it is supposed to be: a day of thanking God for His care and for all He has provided.

If you don’t live in the USA, you can still set aside any day for giving Thanks to God in a special way with your family and call it Thanksgiving.

May God bless you as you make your home a Thanks Giving Home!  Janine