Thanksgiving, as a yearly celebration, has all but been canceled in today’s culture, with stores transitioning directly from Halloween to Christmas. It’s as if the story of our Pilgrim forefathers doesn’t matter. And where it is acknowledged, it is dubbed a “day of mourning” by Leftists who loathe the Christian heritage of the small band of believers who settled Plymouth in 1620. 

  

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guests Steve Hopkins and Gill Arterburn, urge listeners to make Thanksgiving great again. They suggest that families engage in special readings, with excerpts from the Pilgrims and Psalms, sing period songs, and play fun, but meaningful games that give gratitude to God and commemorate the rich legacy of the Pilgrims. Learn from their inspiring Thanksgiving celebrations as you plan your day together with your family. 

  

Click here to read Scott Brown’s “Fifteen Tips for Celebrating Thanksgiving Day.” 

  

Click here to read Steve Hopkins’ “History of the Pilgrims.” 

 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we're going to talk about Thanksgiving, really inspiring ways to celebrate Thanksgiving and a little bit of history, particularly Jason from two of our old friends, Steve Hopkins and Gil Arterburn. So hope you enjoy the podcast. Okay. So Jason, we've got these guys here to talk about Thanksgiving.

Friends of ours. Friends of ours for a long time. These are really inspiring guys. They celebrate Thanksgiving, I was gonna say, with a vengeance for them. Is that what you guys are, your inspiring guys?

They're inspiring guys. Yeah, so the guy in the fake Puritan hat, the cowboy hat, is Steve Hopkins. Steve is a pastor down in Texas, one of our dear friends. He's been on the podcast before. And Gil Arterburn, who's a dear brother from Kentucky, from Paducah, Kentucky and we've had a lot of wonderful times together over the years.

But I wanted to have these guys on the podcast, Jason, because I love the way they celebrate the celebration of Thanksgiving. And I don't know if you've noticed, you know, Thanksgiving is kind of disappearing in the culture right now. You know, it's not in the stores anymore. You go, you go straight from Halloween to Christmas. And Thanksgiving has kind of disappeared.

I was reading articles about it just this last week. Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, okay? Thanksgiving has been canceled. And I believe there are reasons it's been being canceled. And one is to try to erase the actual history of America and some of the particular matters of the founding of America and the coming of the pilgrims.

But I don't want to camp on that. So we want to talk about Thanksgiving on two fronts. One, just kind of the history will briefly camp on that. These guys here have done a lot of thinking and reading about it. And I'm really grateful for that.

So Steve, let's start with you. I want you to just kind of give your thumbnail explanation of the history of Thanksgiving. And then after you're done, we're gonna let Gil roll and then we're gonna get into the fun, inspiring ways to celebrate Thanksgiving. So Steve, you first, history. Right, so first off, the hat, the sombrero as you called it, Scott, this is kind of a, I guess, a Texas pilgrims type hat, you know, like the county pilgrims.

But What I just came out of here is a time with about, I don't know, there was probably 14, 15 grandchildren in the other room, giving them the story of the first Thanksgiving with props, you know, little plastic boats and all this. This is kind of my makeshift outfit here. But, you know, one of the things that we want to do every year is to really inspire our children. You know, generations need to be inspired by these brave families that, you know, tackled that voyage and planted that colony at Plymouth. It's just really important.

You don't remember your history, you don't remember who you are, you forget and it's dangerous. We've seen the result of that in this country. So anyways, it was a fun time to go in there and I couldn't find any big pumpkins. All the pumpkins were gone so I had to go to Whole Foods to get these little little pumpkins and cut five of them up. And actually, I told the story, we cut the tops out of all of us.

Okay. Everybody has to dig their hands in there and get the, the, the pumpkin seeds it out. And if you don't reach into the nasty, you know, pumpkin there and get them out, You can't eat any of the pumpkin seeds when we're done baking them. And they're actually in the oven baking right now. Hey, so, so you do this for your kids.

It's like a pre Thanksgiving Thanksgiving with, with your, with your grandkids. I love that idea. Yes. That's neat. You know, it started with my, with my children when they were younger and now they're younger And so the grandkids are coming up and it's just kind of falling over into the end of them.

Oh, that's me. It was great. It's a good fun time. So where are we? Yeah, you know, we need to know our history.

Like I said, we don't want to spend a lot of time on on history, but, you know, to understand. Our pilgrim forbearers, you know, you have to look at their history and then and then focus in on I encourage people hone in on the Mayflower compact. Because there's wording in the Mayflower Compact that tell what these people were all about. When Brewster and Bradford wrote this document, They're saying, first off, in the name of God, it's just a short paragraph, in the name of God. And then they launch into this formation of the civil body politic.

And in it they say, you know, this is why we're doing this for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith verbatim quote for the glory of God and for the advancement of the Christian faith. That's why we were planning this colony here, you know, but that's why they left England. They left England because they, you know, the Puritans, as they were called when they were in England, mockingly, they weren't able to purify the church. And so not being able to purify the church, they finally decided, look, we've got to leave. Bradford lists all of the corruption of the young people, the corruption of the church, corruption of society, things are in a bad state.

So they leave, they go to Holland, but that's the reason they go. Ultimately, it's in the name of God, for the glory of God, for the advancement of the Christian faith. We can't stay here any longer. And so they leave and now these Puritans, what were once called Puritans, they're now Separatists, they're called the Separatists and they separate from the Church of England. They go to Holland, I think it's 1608, they start their church there in Leiden, and they're well loved by all the people of Holland.

Their neighbors think they're the greatest thing on earth. They want them all to stay. They invite their pastor Robinson, your stack of books there. I'm sure Scott, you've seen this. They want him to come and debate at the university against the Armenians and Episcopius, which was Jacobus Arminius' disciple after he died.

And they're just well loved by them. But they start looking at Holland and they go, you know, the youth culture here is corrupting our kids. And we don't want that to happen. And Spain might be coming in, and we might be in a war with Spain. And if Spain wins, then we're gonna be in a worse situation than we were in England.

So they finally decided, hey, let's throw all in. And so the 37 of the 102 passengers hop aboard two ships. Of course, the one ship has some issues and they ended up going back piling onto the Mayflower. And it's trouble. They went through all kinds of very distressing things on that voyage.

People were sick, people were dying. More died, of course, when they reached Plymouth. But if you read Bradford's history of Plymouth plantation, he says in there, he said, you know, but we weren't discouraged. We're not the kind of people that, I'm paraphrasing here, that get discouraged or, you know, turn back when there's adversity and when things are not going our way, they're all about the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. They're there, they're going to accomplish the mission for which they came to the New World.

Okay. Hey, that's great. Gil, you want to pick up from there? What would you want to add to the history? Yeah, let me just start by, he reminded me of one of my favorite passages in William Bradford's Plymouth plantation there.

And it's in the actual, the first, you know, the introduction in the first couple of chapters are just wonderful. They're worth the price of the whole book, you know, where he just lays out there, you know, they're having this revival really, you know, 75, you know, to 100 years from Martin Luther. And people are falling in love with the Lord Jesus and with His Word. And not in a superficial way, but in a way that they said, you know, these commands and these principles in God's Word are meant for us to apply to all of life, to our church, to our family, and we should do things God's way. It doesn't go well when we don't do things God's way.

So they were persecuted because of that. But they, as Steve said, they persevered through that. They committed themselves not only to God's Word, but to one another. It says They covenanted together. They had a rugged covenantalism.

And they were family. And at one point, I believe I heard just recently, there was maybe when they were in Holland that there was almost 300 of them that were part of that church. So here he says, you know, when they talked about coming, leaving England, they talked about all the difficulties. And he says this, it was replied that all great and honorable actions are accompanying with great difficulties and must be both met and overcome with an answer with answerable courage. It was granted that the dangers were great, but not desperate.

The difficulties were many, but not invincible. But their condition was not ordinary, their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgent. Therefore, they might expect the blessing of God on their proceedings, yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have the comfort of knowing that their endeavor was worthy." So yeah, for the glory of God, you know, they didn't have any illusions about how difficult this was going to be. They knew it would be very tough. They knew they could possibly lose their lives.

They were leaving everything they knew behind and heading to a wilderness. They've been persecuted for many years. And then through cold and sickness, they had to build their own houses, chop down trees and build build houses in a just miserable climate up there in Massachusetts in the wintertime, and grow their own food, hunt for their own food. There was no stores, there was no real civilization as we know it. They were just carving out existence in the wilderness.

And they did that with faith in God and with working together with one another. And after half of them died the first winter, they have a huge celebration. They bring in their crops, they preserve the food, and they have enough to have a great celebration where they said we would have a special time of rejoicing. It's just almost impossible for us to fathom that after their wives and daughters and children had died just six months before that. They're going to rejoice.

And not only that, they're inviting at least 90 Indians, neighboring Indians to this feast and they're going to feed them and they're going to play, you know, have games and races and wrestling matches, whatever they, whatever they did. So It's just really a great example of faith and courage to us. Amen. You know, you think about, you know, people who are going to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, and, you know, there are going to be trials in the background, difficulties, death, hardships, things like that. And yet, we gather to give thanks.

Okay, Gil, who's your favorite Pilgrim personality? Well, there's many of them to hold up as an example and to emulate. But William Bradford, you know, obviously, because of his book, and we know more about him, is just a wonderful example of God's grace. Both his parents died before he was seven years old. I think his mother or father died when he was one and the other one when he was seven.

Lived with his grandparents, they died. Lived with his uncle when he was born again and separated from the Church of England with Richard Clifton and William Brewster and these Puritans, pilgrims that we call them, that his family shunned him. And They didn't approve of that at all. So then he leaves England with the pilgrims for Holland and then comes to America. He ends up being governor of Plymouth plantation five times and lives to a ripe old age.

His wife dies, he remarries, and he basically, he's like George Washington on a smaller scale. He holds that whole thing together for many years. It's hard to imagine how they would have made it without his leadership. And so, and he writes this wonderful book, you know, that was written 400 years ago and is still so relevant and so wonderfully written that from the very first pages you open it up, it just grips you and makes you want to read more of it. And he was studying Hebrew and Greek when he died.

And so, you know, he was just an inspiring and wonderful Christian man. Now that's so good. Hey, so let's talk about how you guys celebrate Thanksgiving. We want to give a whole bunch of tips, you know, encouraging ideas and things like that. So Steve, what do you do to make Thanksgiving great again?

Make Thanksgiving great again. Well, you know, Thanksgiving is a really big thing at the Hopkins household. We're down in our numbers now only because, you know, four, coming on five of our children married spouses that are all in the same family. And so we've got to kind of divide the holidays up a little bit. So we're actually going to be having our Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow night and then another one on Thanksgiving.

But we've always made it a big deal. While the world is going in the opposite direction and it's not a big deal and they don't even want to think about it, you know, it's a really big deal to us and it's inspiring. As Gil said, their lives are inspiring, their courage, their bravery, their devotion to God is very, very inspiring. And so, you know, one thing that I always do, I've done this for, I don't know how many years, but years and years and years since the children were young, is I read a brief history, a paper that I wrote, and have many quotes in it from Bradford from Plymouth, of Plymouth Plantation, and just give a brief history of the, you know, what they went through. And it takes about 20, 25 minutes, but We gather, we've always gathered before.

I'm going to publish that on the link to this podcast if people want to read it. Oh, great. Yeah. Right. Okay.

And so I always read that and then, you know, everything's there, all the feasts is on the table and everything, but we sit down and we just really think about, you know, what these families went through and their devotion to the Lord. Just read through some of that. And then we sing hymns, you know, we sing some of the hymns of gratefulness and thankfulness to God. And then we pray and then we feast. And the day following, we always have a sports day.

So that's the day for everybody comes over. We've had over a hundred people and Everybody's doing everything from volleyball. We have a volleyball thing set up out there in the yard. We have, what is it called? It's the obstacle course.

We've had an obstacle course every year. I don't think we're gonna get the obstacle course done this year, but we do an obstacle course and everybody lines up and does it, and everybody films it, and it's hilarious. And then a tug of war. Yeah, we've done the big tug of war, dug a big hole with the tractor full of water, get this big road open. For some reason, they always wanna go, guys against the girls.

I don't know what that deal is. Maybe it's most of the culture. It's always fun to do that. So yeah, we may we just make it a big deal. I want it to be a good memories.

And you know, I think it has been good memories in our children's lives as they've grown up. This is something they're approaching. We're approaching Thanksgiving and it's a fun time, and it's a time where the family's all together and friends are all together. And we're going to really be thanking God, not just coming together and having, as Bradford said, a feast of gluttons, I think. We're going to come together and thank God and praise God and worship Him together.

We've got a family in our church. They do the neatest thing. They invite lots of people over from the church and the community and they dress up, you know, they don't wear cowboy hats, you know, like you are, but they dress up in Puritan gear and they give speeches and they quote, you know, the various Puritans and tell stories of, of the Mayflower and stuff like that. That it's such a, such a fun, fun deal. Okay.

So Gail, what about you? Yeah, we do. You know, some similar things. We've tried to, you know, we weren't going to celebrate Halloween. So when my kids were young, but I thought, you know, if you're just canceling stuff all the time and saying, no, we're not going to do that.

You've got to replace it with something better. So get your creative juices flowing. We've celebrated a big reformation day many times with all kinds of games dressing up. My dad was always tetzel. And he would run around with a, you know, a monkish robe on and a box, you know, and when the coin in the coffer drops and that kind of thing.

And then people would share missionary stories or stories of the reformers and a similar thing with with the with Thanksgiving. We have a lot of different games. We will have axe throwing, knife throwing, maybe shoot guns, let the kids shoot, you know, some bow and arrows and BB guns and things like that. And then have a big hayride, hide candy in the hay and have them dig for that. Oh, that's a great idea.

Maybe reenact the Mayflower, either on the hay ride or sometimes in a room. I had a friend of mine, he would have a little bottle of some kind of animal urine, fox urine, I think, that just reeks to high heaven. He would talk to him about how they were crammed in that Mayflower and unsavory things were going on and it was smelly down there and wet. And then he would open that box urine and all the children would just be totally grossed out. But they never forgot it.

I mean, my older... You asked Will about Adam Triton's Mayflower reenactment. He never forget that either. You know, your smell is the strongest of your senses to evoke memories. So we had just a lot of fun like that.

Will actually would dress up. You'll have to get him to do that with your grandchildren. We would have a turkey shoot and all the children would have nerf guns and will would put a I can't really tell you well he would put his arms and his legs in a hoodie and then have the hood pulled up over him and a big turkey tail on his rear end. I have pictures. I have pictures of him.

He would run around like a turkey, because he only had two legs now and no arms, and they would shoot at him. So yeah, We also will tell the stories and sing, you know, Great is Thy Faithfulness, usually Psalm 100. That supposedly was one of the Puritans' favorite psalms that they sing to a common tune. And then I found this poem called Five Kernels of Corn. And it's a New England tradition for many generations that they would read this before Thanksgiving every year up there.

And the Five Kernels of Corn kind of tells the story of the pilgrims and the probably mythological story of them only having five kernels of corn a day to eat, but still being able to give thanks for five kernels of corn, five kernels of corn and for William Bradford and all the other, it just goes verse by verse through the history. So everybody, that when I asked my children, you know, tell me what your favorite things are. That was one of the things they said they love was reciting five kernels of corn today together. So we also here recently found a wonderful movie which I think I sent to you, Scott, and I think you all have watched it. It's called Desperate Crossing.

And it's all the, you know, if you don't have the time or the money to run up to Plymouth for the weekend, Plymouth Plantation. This thing is done, this is a movie, a docu-movie that talks about the history of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. It's done by the professional actors that actually work at Plymouth plantation as a job. And it's just, it's just by far the best thing I've ever seen. And, and, And almost everything they say in there is directly from Bradford's Plymouth plantation, word for word.

No, that's really neat. That is so neat. So we just want to spin out all kinds of ideas. Here's another one. Read Psalm 136.

It's one of those personal testimony Psalms where there's responsive reading and it's neat to do the responsive reading. We've done that on Thanksgiving. Play some Pilgrim games. Supposedly there's some authentic Pilgrim games that we've played. We're going to put this on the notes for this broadcast, but there's a spoon and apple race.

There's a pumpkin roll. You know, the pilgrims would shoot guns on Thanksgiving. Edward Winslow writes this, amongst other recreations we exercised our arms. Many of the Indians coming amongst us and amongst the rest of the greatest king, Massasoit, with some 90 men whom for three days we entertained and feasted." So they went out with the Indians and shot guns. So I guess that's maybe why you guys do that.

So if you come to Vigor the Browns on Thanksgiving, you better wear orange, maybe. That's exactly right. Hey, here's another thing. Read the first Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1777. That's really rich in biblical language.

It's very beautiful. Read George Washington's Proclamation, October 3, 1789. Another very eloquent, very moving testimony, really of obedience to God. And then read Edward Winslow's description of the first Thanksgiving that he wrote in 1621 in modern language. It's helpful to get the modern language one.

Another is explain the value of giving thanks to everybody who gathers. And there's so, you know, look up the word Thanksgiving in the Bible and just pick out a few verses. They're just they're so inspiring. You know, you mentioned this earlier, you know, read from Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford. You know, here's my copy.

It's in two volumes. It's it's a beautiful layout of the original language. You know, seeing hymns at the pilgrims sang, They're in the Ainsworth Salter. You know, you can listen to the way that it was sung in the Salter. You know, there's just so many ways to celebrate Thanksgiving.

It's really important to tell the story of the pilgrims. Steve, I'm going to publish your story that you wrote. I've got the full text. Anyway, one thing we would do, is, we would have, the younger children. A lot of times I would write up a little skit from one certain part of the Pilgrim story.

Maybe we do one year on Squanto and then another year on the, I think it was those Billington boys that were kind of rebels and almost blew the ship up playing making firecrackers out of the you know so we would we would actually have the the the young well my young children when they were young and then the grandchildren kind of coach them a little bit. It wouldn't be very professional, but it would be something they would remember and everybody would have fun. Sometimes we'd video it doing a skit like that. Sometimes we would do speed charades where you divide everybody up into two teams and everybody has the same charades, right, but they're in two different rooms and they have to as soon as they guess it they have to run back and get their next one and see who can get that the fastest, but we'll have, you know, charades that have something to do with Thanksgiving and the pilgrims and, you know, they're acting out turkeys and, somebody told me last night, Scott, that Gil, if you and I both look in the mirror, what will happen? And I said, I'm not sure.

He said, we'll see two turkeys. Oh my. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so grateful to live in America and to have an opportunity to spend a whole day celebrating and giving thanks. Jason, any thoughts?

Gil mentioned Psalm 100. It's actually marked as a psalm of thanksgiving. It's only five verses. So when you come to the thanksgiving table, give serious thought to reading Psalm 100. Here's how it ends.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name, for the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations. Amen. I wanna close with a citation from William Bradford's of Plymouth Plantation. Thus, out of small beginnings, greater things have been produced by his hand that made all things of nothing and gives being to all things that are as one small candle may light a thousand so the light here kindled has shown unto many so true Praise the Lord for God's greatness and we're so thankful for him.

So anyway, I hope you guys have a great Thanksgiving. Pull out all the stops. It'll be great. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope you can join us next time. I hope this resource was a blessing to you.

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