Read it through once

The atmosphere at Plymouth’s Harvest Home feast was similarly warm and close. A year of privation, culminating in the death of half of the community, had pulled the rest together. Communal farming was adopted—cooperation legalized. By breaking bread together in the open, they sanctified in a robust, secular way their communion. The familiar scene to which we have been accustomed, of Pilgrims and Indians feasting together while seated at tables in the open, is mostly a creation of later artists. It is doubtful that there were enough tables to accommodate even a tenth of the number who were celebrating. It is more likely that food was taken, not at an appointed time and place, but at frequent intervals throughout the time of the festival. Seating was almost certainly on the ground for the most part. Lacking forks, which did not appear in Plymouth until a century later, food was taken with fingers, from the tips of knives, and with spoons. Wooden trenchers (small shallow dishes) were probably much in evidence, while other foodstuffs could have been consumed directly from large kettles, or, in the case of meat, eaten with the hands, hot from the roasting fire. Far from the formality of a single meal taken together, the consumption of food at Plymouth’s first Harvest Home was but one event that mixed with the gaming and “exercising of arms” in one happy blend.