Pilgrims' progress Thanksgiving abroad

...The Pilgrims were remarkable for what they dared...

...As Calvinist dissenters from the state Church of England, they found themselves no longer welcome in England, but paradoxically were not allowed to leave...

...Having been relieved to find toleration in Holland, the Pilgrims became acquainted with the other side of the coin-that one was expected to tolerate the unwelcome practices of others...

...But life was not all harmony in Amsterdam either, where a dispute within the Separatist community arose...

...They were certainly not provincial...

...Bangs or a colleague will happily give you the short (thirty minutes) or long (ninety minutes or more) version of the Pilgrims' adventures in Leiden...

...The ideal guest list includes my immediate Dutch family, one or two other expatriate Americans, and one or two others who have never been exposed to the tradition...

...The museum is tiny, located in one room of a seventeenth-century house that evokes the Pilgrims' circumstances...

...Whenever American guests are visiting around the holiday, I make a point of taking them to the Pieterskerk in Leiden, which dates from the Pilgrims' time and has a corner devoted to their memory...

...Last and perhaps most decisive was the threat of war...

...Dutch influences on the Pilgrims' later experiment in self-government can possibly be found in their practices of civil marriage registration and the democratic election of civic officials, both of which were established ways of doing things in Leiden...

...the antecedent events in Europe remain vague...

...After two attempts, they successfully fled to join the refugee Separatist congregation already established in Amsterdam...

...Although I miss being in America at this time of year, I have found that there are at least two distinct advantages to celebrating Thanksgiving at a distance...

...The celebration (part of a fair lasting ten days) commemorated and gave thanks for the 1574 relief of Leiden, when the city was saved from capture and massacre by Spanish Catholic troops...

...After more than ten years in Leiden the Pilgrims decided to make a new start in a place where they would have more control over societal arrangements, if not over life itself...

...Old age, for textile workers, brought the threat of poverty...

...I think at home 1 would feel self-conscious making some of the speeches I do in Holland...

...It is striking to realize the variety of influences the Pilgrims were exposed to-including competing cultures, religions, and scientific thought-before making their way to the New World...

...For most Americans the Thanksgiving story begins with the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock...

...A little freedom to experiment can enhance the tradition...

...Food and other goods were purchased at weekly open-air markets, which still operate in many of the same areas of the city today...

...I also take them to the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum...

...On Sundays the Pilgrims worshiped in a room of the former Begijnhof Chapel, which was used by the university after the Reformation to house an anatomy theater, a library, and lecture rooms...

...The Pilgrims had little success in converting their fellow residents in Leiden to their idea of proper Sabbath observance...

...But we work our way around these obstacles...

...About half the Pilgrims made their living in the textile industry, while others had occupations such as tailor, shoemaker, carpenter, cooper, cabinetmaker, brewer's employee, and tobacco seller...

...Eventually John Robinson and William Brew-ster led like-minded persons to Leiden...

...Not that I am inclined to shortchange tradition on this most traditional occasion, but there is something to be said for not being bound by family expectations to do things exactly as they always have been done...

...There were forty thousand refugees in the city by 1620...

...William Bradford cited several factors in the Pilgrims' decision to leave Holland...

...Whereas the museum contains a fine collection of minor, mostly domestic artifacts from the early seventeenth century (tools, prints, clothing, furniture), the real tour is an aural one...

...Reflection is also invited by the fact that additional planning and adjustments are required: canned pumpkin isn't available in the supermarket (fresh pumpkin can be used for pie but it's a lot more work), nor is frozen turkey (we order it fresh from the wild-game butcher), and the fourth Thursday of November is not a day off...

...One is that you have more freedom for innovation...

...But since I live in Holland, I like to give attention to the extended period the Pilgrims spent in Leiden (1609-20), after leaving England and before going to America...

...Perhaps, too, one finds a precedent for the Pilgrims' 1621 Thanksgiving celebration in the annual services held on October 3 in the Pieterskerk...

...The twelve-year truce between the Netherlands and the Catholic armies of Hapsburg Spain and Austria, which had safeguarded the peace during the Pilgrims' time in Holland, was nearing an end...

...any first-time listener will find the account informative and interesting...

...Without needing to mythologize their experience, we can easily admire them for the lengths they went in order to live life according to their own ideals...

...They worked dawn to dusk six days a week-children too...

...One learns that the Pilgrims came to Leiden from Scroo-by in England by way of Amsterdam...

...During dinner I make sure there are some explicit introduction and retelling of the Thanksgiving story, preferably in a version my immediate family has not heard too often before...

...So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden [sic]," William Bradford recounts, "which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb 11:16), and therein quieted their spirits...

...Among the other religious groups living there in toleration were Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Jews, Gypsies, Dutch Lutherans, Dutch Mennonites, Walloon Mennonites, Dutch Reformed, Muslims, and others...

...Another, more significant advantage is that celebrating the holiday in a different cultural context invites reflection on what the holiday means-to America and to oneself...

...Another was that the older generation of the Separatist community saw their children growing up adopting habits and mores not to their liking...

...There one can hear a rich recounting of the Pilgrims' time in the Netherlands...

...The Thanksgiving tradition must be explained to non-Americans, something I enjoy doing...

...Timothy P. Schilling is on the staff of the Center for Parish Spirituality, Nijmegen, the Netherlands...

...What the Pilgrims experienced in Leiden was busy city life and much hard work...

...The manager of the museum is Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, a historian whose father wrote the definitive biography of Jacobus Arminius, the influential theologian who was a professor at Leiden until his death in 1609...

...The hard work and lack of prosperity was one...

...Leiden was a manufacturing center notable for its Calvinist university (the Pilgrims' pastor, John Robinson, participated in the far-reaching theological debates there) and its diversity...

...The lecture is detailed enough that I can listen to it repeatedly and always hear something new...

...The future held the prospect of violence and renewed religious persecution...

...Neophytes are amazed to learn that Americans eat 50 million turkeys on this day...

...I am indebted to Bangs's book, Pilgrim Life in Holland, for much of the historical information presented here...

...more promise was seen in the possibility of bringing this perspective to the Indians...