appointed
to avert his wrath, as shown in blasted wheat; moulded beans, wormy
pease, and mildewed corn; in drought and grasshoppers; in Indian
invasions; in caterpillars and other woes of New England; in children
dying by the chincough; in the "excessive raigns from the botles of
Heaven"--all these evils being sent for the crying sins of wig-wearing,
sheltering Quakers, not paying the ministers, etc. A fast and a feast
kept close company in Puritan calendars. A fast frequently preceded
Thanksgiving Day, and was sometimes appointed for the day succeeding
the feast--a clever plan which had its good hygienic points. Days of
private as well as of public fast and thanksgiving were also observed by
individuals. Judge Sewall took the greatest satisfaction in his
fastings, and carefully outlined his plan of prayer throughout the fast
day, which he spent in his chamber--a plan which included and specified
ministers, rulers and magistrates, his family, and every person whom he
said "had a smell of relation" to him; and also every nation and people
in the known world. He does not note Thanksgiving Day as a holiday of
any importance.

Though in the mind of the Puritan, Christmas smelled to heaven of
idolatry, when his own festival, Thanksgiving, became annual, it assumed
many of the features of the old English Christmas; it was simply a day
of family reunion in November instead of December, on which Puritans ate
turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin-pie, instead of "superstitious
meats" such as a baron of beef, boar's head, and plum-pudding.

Many funny stories are told of the early Thanksgiving Days, such as the
town of Colchester calmly ignoring the governor's appointed day and
observing their own festival a week later in order to allow time for the
arrival, by sloop from New York, of a hogshead of molasses for pies.
Another is recounted of a farmer losing his cask of Thanksgiving
molasses out of his cart as he reached the top of a steep hill, and of
its rolling swiftly down till split in twain by its fall. His helpless
discomfiture and his wife's acidity of temper and diet are comically
told.

There is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society a
broadside announcing a thanksgiving for victory in King Philip's War;
and during the following year, 1677, the first regular Thanksgiving
proclamation was printed.

But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward,
writing in 1699, does not name it,