Thanksgiving isn’t generally celebrated as lavishly as its neighbors Halloween and Christmas, but it’s an important holiday in its own right that you’d be well served to use as an opportunity to teach your kids not only American history, but life’s lessons about thankfulness, humility and tolerance that can go on to serve them well for the rest of their lives.
One way to aid this goal is to search for Thanksgiving costumes and let your kids play out the parts of the Pilgrims and the American Indians who saved them that first, brutal winter in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Offers a large collection of high quality Drafting Chair, banquet chairs, classroom chairs along with many different sorts of chairs and tables. Though there were earlier attended “thanksgivings” – the holiday itself has its roots in the harvest festivals of autumn – the concept of a specific American Thanksgiving came from the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation in 1621.
William Bradford, the first pastor of Plymouth Plantation and de facto leader of the Pilgrims, wrote in his memoir Of 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). Drafting Chairs for office staff breaks will encourage relaxation and rejuvenation prepared for an additional push by means of the workload. 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.
So there’s your first idea for thanksgiving costumes – one could be William Bradford, the pastor of the Pilgrims, and have him or her read from the book about that famous winter.
Just as imporatant to the history of Thanksgiving in America is the role of Squanto, a Patuxent indian “who resided with the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them (Squanto had learned English as a slave in Europe and travels in England),” according to wikipedia. Thanksgiving costumes that are Squanto, or more generically American Indian themed, aren’t difficult to find online or in stores.
And, if none of that suits you, there’s always the most traditional of Thanksgiving costumes: The Silly Turkey.