To the Editor:

Shortly we will be celebrating Thanksgiving, a holiday for coming together with family and friends, celebrating the blessings of the past year, and overindulging in rich foods like mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. As we slowly emerge into a post-COVID world it might do us well to remember that the history of the Thanksgiving holiday is intimately woven with the themes of struggle, loss, togetherness, and gratitude.

As we learned in school, the American holiday is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the local Wampanoag Indians. That meal has a backdrop of loss and death. In September,1620, a small ship known as the Mayflower left England for the new world.

Half of its 102 passengers were seeking religious freedom, half were seeking future prosperity. After an arduous voyage across the Atlantic, they settled in Plymouth. Sadly, during that first brutal winter only half of the passengers survived. Fortunately, those weakened settlers that survived into spring were able to grow their first corn crop and learn to live off the land with the help of the local Indians.

In the fall of 1621 after harvesting their first successful corn crop, the Plymouth colonists invited the Wampanoag Indians to celebrate the first Thanksgiving dinner. Despite having gone through an incredibly challenging year full of loss, they chose to gather with those around them and to give thanks for all that they had.

As direct descendants of Stephen Hopkins, one of those original Mayflower passengers, Thanksgiving has special significance for our family as we gather to celebrate a legacy provided us at great cost by our ancestors. But my ancestors were not the only ones to provide their descendants with a great legacy at a great cost in human suffering.

Each one of us is the recipient of a unique legacy passed to us by a unique group of ancestors whose successes and sufferings made us who we are and gave us the freedom in which we live. This Thanksgiving may we all celebrate the legacies of those who have contributed to our successes and made our nation great.

Don Studley

Newtown