Governor William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Around this time of year, you may see or hear the text of Governor Bradford’s proclamation calling for the First Thanksgiving:

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.
Now 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

Whether you find this inspiring or insipid, all that really matters is that it is a hoax.  The proclamation gives the wrong year for the celebration, to begin with. According to the only contemporary account of the traditional founding event, which was itself clearly prepared as propaganda to be sent back to the investors in England to make the situation in the colony sound far rosier than it actually was, the year was 1621.  There was a day of thanksgiving proclaimed in 1623, but the date of that celebration was  in the summer, most probably the end of July. It celebrated two events - the end of a drought, and the news that a ship carrying new colonists, feared sunk, was safe and in transit. It had nothing to do with the harvest, activities of Native Americans, pestilence or the establishment of the church.

The proclamation refers to the colony’s “pastor,” although they didn’t have one for many years after settling in New England. At the time of the alleged proclamation, religious duties were handled by an Elder, William Brewster.

It uses language and concepts unknown to the Pilgrims, most notably the reference to the dictates of conscience, an 18^th-century Enlightenment concept that the Pilgrims would have roundly rejected.  Comically, it alludes to “ye Pilgrim Rock,” a landmark unknown to the Pilgrims themselves and not mentioned for 120 years after they landed. In fact, according to the website of Plimoth Plantation itself, the very term Pilgrims is anachronistic, as is the use of the word vegetables.

This obvious fabrication has been circulating in the United States for at least three decades, if not longer, and despite its glaring flaws it continues to be cited authoritatively.  The earliest allusion to it seems to be from 1985, when a White House speechwriter quoted from it in one of Ronald Reagan’s presidential Thanksgiving proclamations.  This in itself is not surprising, the Gipper having famously taken great liberties with the facts for the sake of what he perceived to be a good story. Since that time it has appeared (in whole or in part) in at least three books published by reputable presses, and it literally thrives on the internet, where it is reproduced ad infinitum.

As I have done by posting it here, but at least with a caveat.