Thanksgiving in Virginia

We leave today for a few days in Richmond to visit my daughter.  Julia was born there, and when she was just two months old, the four of us -- Julia, my wife Marcia, my mother-in-law Gert and I -- drove down to Berkeley Plantation, about 30 minutes away.  (It's pronounced "Barkley" there, as in Berkeley Square.)

It was a very warm November day, and we enjoyed the well-maintained grounds of the old place.  The young tour guide, a very light-skinned woman who she said she was related to the original owners, gave us a great deal of historical background.  The garconniere -- the separate and almost equally opulent house that stood not too many yards from the main house -- was of great interest, since the men of the household kept their mistresses there, presumably slave women of progressively lighter complexion as the years wore on.  (Forget miscegenation, what about in-breeding?) 

Well.  It's always nice to learn about the saucy side of American history, which is usually so hagiographic.

Then there was the Thanksgiving story.  At that time it was just beginning to be bruited about the Old Dominion that the "first Thanksgiving" feast in English America was held at Berkeley Plantation in 1619, two years before the Pilgrims' more famous shindig in Plymouth, up there in drafty ole Yankeeland.

Berkeley Thanksgiving.  So where the hell's the turkey?  The Smithfield ham biscuits?  The Jello mold?

As a native of a place called, in a sociological study of the 1930s, "Yankee City," I took great offense to this.  My wife and her mother, Richmond-born, were delighted and tormented me with this additional example of Virginia's firstness in damned near everything. 

My defensive response was to snarl, "For Chrissake, they were always falling on their knees and thanking God for everything in those days.  Big deal."  They weren't buying it.

I tried a historical perspective.  "But the American tradition of Thanksgiving is based on the Pilgrims' precedent, on their menu and the whole story about Squanto and the Indians helping them survive" (no good deed goes unpunished, eh) -- I mentioned cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.  "Over the River and through the Woods." No go.

This is what I'm talking about.  Their puritanism did not extend to alcohol.

My Jewish wife was a lot more flexible on the celebration of Christmas than she was Thanksgiving.  In fact she went ape over Christmas as soon as we got engaged, to an extent that became alarming, since we hadn't celebrated it so enthusiastically as I was growing up. 

On this Thanksgiving matter, though, she was Virginian through and through.  No yielding.  Marcia Sue was brought up in the Capital of the Confederacy after all.  "We had the first Thanksgiving, and you can tell all your Yankee friends that's that." 

So.  We fly to Richmond today.  We go to the Jefferson Hotel for their splendid locally-sourced Thanksgiving dinner with, unfortunately, not that many Virginia wines.  And we go with the flow.  If someone brings up Berkeley Plantation, fine.  Sure, sure, they had the first Thanksgiving.

But in my heart I know which one counted.

Comments

[Richard]

Interesting you write about the first Thanksgiving at the Plantation, as USA Today has an article, also today, that the first Thanksgiving was Sept 8, 1565 in St. Augustine. See the link below:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2007-11-20-first-thanksgiving_N.htm

[Sarah Newton]

Sounds like a wonderful day is planned for you. I don't celebrate thanksgiving, being English so my equivalent is Christmas.

Crazily, as I live in Rome, my partner booked us into have Christmas Day lunch at an Italian restaurant!