A Different Thanksgiving Story

Here’s a wee hunk of American history that you probably don’t know.

We’re all familiar with the story of the first Thanksgiving, the feast shared by the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag neighbors. No, turkey was apparently not served. Instead, the meats feasted upon that day were most likely venison and duck. But that’s not the piece of history I’m here to teach. I’m here today to talk about the corn that was served that fateful day.

Even without butter, corn on the cob is kind of sloppy food. And when you’re a Puritan, sloppy food is embarrassing food, and embarrassing food is sinful. One particular fellow by the name of Joseph Lymon expressed his disgust with the concept of grabbing the corn in one’s bare hands and gnawing on it, leaving little wet torn up bits all over it. He vowed that he would find a way to make corn eating sufficiently godly, or that he’d make sure no one ever ate it again.

At the second Thanksgiving feast a year later, after the prayer, Lymon stood up to announce that he had found a way to enjoy corn without insulting anyone’s (including god’s, of course) sense of propriety. He held up his invention: small, beautifully polished pieces of wood with one end sharpened. He proudly demonstrated how to insert them into either end of the corn cob and feast on the lord’s bounty without ever having to touch the food with one’s hands. “With my new Corntensils,” he declared, “we can give thanks and praise to the Lord without acting like lowly beasts.”

His announcement, much to his surprise, was met with laughter of derision, and he stormed away in a holier than thou huff.

A week later, Lymon and a few of his followers packed up their belongings (including the colony’s supply of Corntensils) and declared that they could no longer stand to live among the ungodly beasts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They traveled inland to the west and the south for weeks, until they arrived at a wide river. It was there that they declared they had reached the land promised to them by god, where they would create their own colony, with their own laws, not the least of which would be the law of Corn Etiquette.

Tags: Thanksgiving, History, Etiquette