Kingdom Report
www.kingdomvision.co.za
Week of 29 November 2025
America's Thanksgiving Day Myth
In America this past Thursday they celebrated their annual Thanksgiving Day. There is glaring myth of the history of that day not told anymore. And a lesson for South Africa and the church as we also strive to be a city on a hill to the world.
Each year at this time, schoolchildren all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
The Christian Pilgrims come from England in the Mayflower under their leader William Bradford and in the Arabella under the leadership of John Winthrop. The spiritual nature and motivation of the dangerous journey to make the first settlements on the eastern New England coast of America were wonderful. Bibles in hand and wonderful proclamation:
John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, articulated the famous “city upon a hill” vision in his sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity”, written and delivered aboard the ship Arbella just before or shortly after arriving in the New World.
The most famous passage is this:
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”
William Bradford aboard the Mayflower before landing wrote out the famous Mayflower Compact:
“In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of England, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
They came for a new life where they would settle a new nation according to principle of "Christian Charity". And thereby be a light unto the nations.
This is the story told about a first hard year for the settlers but celebrated with local Indians after the first year with a great feast day. It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the Pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America, and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620–21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hard-working or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves. Most of the bounty for the feast was provided by the Indians who took pity on the struggling pilgroms
In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years because they refused to work in the field. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened? After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that were most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism.
He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of the famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609–10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty. Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth.
Today America, Europe, South Africa....are basically socialist states. Most of the population living on government handouts. In these cases the bounty that the Indians gave the early settlers for them to survive is replaced by governments today who get the extra bounty needed to keep our societies from falling apart is raising enormous amounts of loans and debts.
"The American Way of Life" is not possible without the American government borrowing $2 trillion every year to pay all the benefits that politicians promise their voters. In foreign trade America must print up an extra trillion dollars each year to buy goods from other nations to stock the shelves of Walmart. In each case both in Europe and America the people are not willing to pay through taxes all the benefits they believe are their right given to them from their politicians promises.
The "Indians" helping them to a bountiful Thanksgiving Day are their children who must pay pack the enormous accumulated budget and trade deficit debts of the nations in the years ahead. The children's inheritance has been spent by their profligate parents.
In socialist Soviet Russia and communist China they realized they had to do the same thing that Governor Bradford did to solve the poverty and hunger problem.....give the people each their own property and tell them you work or you starve. China and Russia came out of abject communist socialist poverty very quickly.
There is a much myth about either socialist or Christian charity. Yes God expects those of us who have to help those who are in need when we are able.
However national organized socialism is national organized theft that leads to national poverty. The scripture says "thou shalt not steal". The implication of that commandment is profound. It implies that God expects for people to be creators and owners of property which belongs to them and if you take it by coercion or coercive government taxes for whatever charitable impulse a thief or politician might have it is still theft.
Our solution here in South Africa for a prosperous future is to follow God's economic laws as outlined in the scripture. Our socialist policies that give handouts to 18 million people from the state is not sustainable. Our mounting debts are not sustainable.
People must have a path towards the ownership of property through the creation of wealth. The wealth of the nation from the productive work of the people is being extracted by an overbearing government on one side and corporate monopoly of financial capital on the other side.
When governments extract extortionate amounts of tax for redistribution we call that socialism. When corporations join in with their extraction of excess profits to be redistributed to a select shareholders we call the combination of state and corporate extraction fascism.
The myths we tell ourselves about this sort of economic situation are many. Politicians will go on and on "we will care for you just give us your vote", corporate finance will go and on about give us your accumulated savings we will take care of you.
But people and families are decapitalized, owning nothing, working as plantations serfs paycheck to paycheck if they so happen to find employment.
Like the Pilgrims of the 1600's who had a vision of building a new nation based on a the Word of God to be a "shining city on a hill" for the world to see....we in the church of South Africa must embark still on that journey to get out of national and corporate socialism and all their political and financial myths and broken promises and find God's way from scripture as to how we build our own New Jerusalem in the midst of a falling world Babylon.