adults

Thanksgiving Costumes Help To Remind Us What Thanksgiving Is All About

The holiday of Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to teach your kids not only American history, but also life’s lessons about thankfulness, giving, tolerance and humility that will serve them well for the remainder of their lives.

A great way to achieve this is to search for Thanksgiving costumes for your kids and let them play out the roles of the Pilgrims and the native Indians who saved them that first, harsh and brutal winter in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although there were earlier documented “Thanksgivings”, the holiday itself has its roots in the harvest festivals of fall – the concept we are familiar of today, of a specific American Thanksgiving feast, came from the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation in 1621.

The first pastor of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford, wrote in his memoir Of the Plymouth Plantation…

“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.”

There’s an idea for a Thanksgiving costume – you could dress up as William Bradford, the Pilgrims‘ pastor, and read from a book about that famous winter. Dressing up in a Pilgrim costume would fit really well into the theme of the Thanksgiving feast.

The other important part to the history of Thanksgiving in America, is the role of Squanto, the Patuxent Indian lived with the Wampanoag Indians, and who taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and was an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned to speak English as a slave in Europe). Thanksgiving costumes that represent Squanto, or are native Indian themed costumes, are easy to find online or in stores.

And, if none of that suits you, there’s always the most traditional of Thanksgiving costumes, the big turkey costume! Go that extra mile this year, beyond the lavish turkey dinner, the colorful Thanksgiving decorations, and dress up in Thanksgiving costumes, it will help to remind everyone the origins of one of our treasured and important holidays.

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