A Puritan Eucharist: Thoughts on Thanksgiving

The word Eucharist means thanksgiving. In Christianity, the Eucharist has essentially been an offering of sacrifice (the blood and body of Christ given at the alter), a re-commitment to a person's baptism in repentance (the baptism of tears), and a time of praise given to God in thanksgiving of redemption. Beginning with the Swiss Christian-humanist reformer Ulrich Zwingli and then with the Anabaptists, Protestant Christianity became highly suspicious of the mysteries of ancient Christianity, including the sacrificial aspect of communion, as well as the nature of the elements -- body and blood. 

The English Reformation was a struggle for authority between the English Crown and Rome. Up until the 1680s, there was an ebb and flow between English Protestantism (i.e. Anglicanism) and Roman Catholicism within the monarchy. Anglicanism was practically a hybrid between Protestantism and Catholicism, allowing for a plurality of theologies, so long as the outward liturgy remained essentially Catholic. A movement aimed at purifying English Protestantism from its quasi-Catholicism developed during this time, which eventually departed England for North America because it refused to be artificially Catholic within Anglicanism, and it objected to Catholic sacramentalism. This movement followed the Zwinglian model of rigid iconoclasm. By law, this group -- pejoratively called the Puritans -- could have held their theology within Anglicanism, but they would be required to worship in Anglican churches, which included the Catholic style liturgy. 

Rather than dwell in the shadow of what they felt was a facade, and instead of facing punitive action, the Puritans chose to emigrate to North America in what they felt was a divine calling to establish a fuller sense of being English, embodied in Protestant Christian polity. This meant a new land, with a conflation between civics and faith. For them, America was to become a mission field and the establishment of a New England where they could be true English, divorced from Catholic corruption. They were to become a utopian New Zion and they envisioned themselves as pilgrims on a journey to wholeness. Of course, the pilgrims was the name applied to the Puritans who settled the Plymouth Colony and who became famous in their connection to the contemporary holiday of Thanksgiving.      

Thanksgiving, since the 1600s has become replete with revisionism and anachronistic additives. Contemporary Thanksgiving debates center on subsequent maltreatment of Native American populations and whether turkey and pumpkin pie were really consumed in an integrated potluck. These are abstractions to what present Thanksgiving means and what historic Puritan thought contained. In other words, these are tired considerations and not instrumental to my article. Modern Thanksgiving has plenty of good to offer. It conveys a sense of national unity, whereby the nation can remember its ethnogenesis in a flattering light, which contains within it a sense of cohesive identity. It is also a holiday that focuses on family, friends, and others. The day also allows for introspection of a person in relation to their material life -- a real opportunity to be thankful. And lastly, Thanksgiving is economically positive for the nation. There's nothing inherently wrong with this perspective. 

For the Puritans, Thanksgiving was likely a real thanksgiving for all that God had provided toward their survival. It was not likely a one time event, which is the mythology of the holiday. Likely, giving thanks was endemic to the Puritan Christian ethos. It was real thanks. It was Eucharistic. In ancient Christianity, a fellowship meal usually followed the communion breaking of bread and offering of wine as the emblematic body and blood of Christ, given over for the salvation of the world. The breaking of bread and the offering of wine is the sacrifice at the alter seen in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches today. Protestantism, including Puritanism, has divorced the sacrifice of Christ from communion, believing that the sacrifice was accomplished only once at Calvary, so any alter work was an unnecessary recapitulation of a one time event. Despite the fact that Catholics and Orthodox don't actually believe in re-sacrificing Christ, Protestantism often elevated this view as a polemic against Catholicism. In reality, older liturgical Christianity believed that Christ's sacrifice was a one-time deal and that baptism and communion mystically entered into this timeless act, truly uniting people to Christ (communion = common union). For the Puritans and American Protestants in general, Thanksgiving is perhaps the most symbolic correlative to an ancient Eucharistic schema.

For Protestants, communion became a mere symbol to remember Jesus' sacrifice and not active of the real sacrifice. I still wonder how we can remember what we didn't participate in, so perhaps a mystical union to Christ's real one-time sacrifice in the present is worthy of consideration as an active remembrance. Where Thanksgiving shines in Protestantism is its sense of active remembrance. In this way, Protestants step into a Eucharist in a timeless sense. Though they do practice communion, Thanksgiving is more like the fellowship meal that followed historic Christian Eucharists, whereby the common unity of the Church was expressed. Thanksgiving is the last ditch hold-out of a conflated Christian-civic experiment, where national unity is linked to God's provision. Thanksgiving then, is perhaps more vital for American Protestantism than even the communion elements, as scandalous as that sounds. Though communion is done more regularly in Protestant churches than the annual Thanksgiving holiday, it has become more ceremonial and less actively applied beyond some vague emotionalism individuals bring to the cup and sup. Thanksgiving though, seems to truly place people in a mode of active remembrance. This is true despite the additives of football, TV show marathons, and bickering relatives. This is true even if the pilgrims or history are not consulted, because the ritual of a common meal enlivens common unity, and people tend to draw together to remember what has been given them. Thanksgiving then, in my estimation, is the Puritan and American Protestant Eucharist.