One of the benefits of teaching French high schoolers is that I get to act as a sort of cultural ambassador when it comes to all things America. And since no one is around to supervise or check my facts, the full weight of the U.S.'s rich history falls on my broad, awkwardly hairy shoulders.
At first, Thanksgiving came up almost by accident. I had extra time in the class period and decided to see how much my students knew about the tradition. Turkey, check. Indians, check. Mayflower, impressive, check. I found that my own knowledge of Thanksgiving wasn't too far off from theirs.
"O were ze pilgrims?" What is this kid, a journalist? "Ummm." I racked my brains for something useful from A.P. American History...
During my lunch break I printed out a short, digestible history of the pilgrim's voyage--which served as the very loose structure for my talk. Along the way I probably embellished some stuff. I'm still not even sure if the Puritans were leaving England or ruling it. What matters is that I said it with conviction. The following is an excerpt from my talk on Thanksgiving:
"OK. So the year is...Well, it's the 1600's. A hundred years earlier Christopher Columbus had discovered America on behalf of Spain and he was just rolling in the doubloons. Things are happening in England and there's a religious reformation under...ummm...King Charles...the...first. Let's say first. So this group of religious separatists flee on the Mayflower from Plymouth England. It's half Puritans and half people seeking land ownership. Do we understand that? People were basically telling themselves, 'there's this big old country that's full of land and I can just take a boat ride, put up a fence and bingo, I'm a home owner.' So 66 days later they land on the coast of Massachusetts by accident even though they were aiming for New York. Can you believe it took that long to cross the atlantic? That's two months!"
At this point I'm interrupted by a curious student who, reading along, asks, "Zo, zey named dis new place 'Plymouth' alzo?"
"Yes. I know. It's really uncreative. They could have at least thrown a 'New' in front of it. But trust me, that's the tiniest mistake they made. For example, they arrive in the middle of winter and have to spend the next three months on the boat. Do we see what it says there? Half of them died! There's 54 left. It's like Game of Thrones. Can you imagine how depressing that must have been after two months at sea? So finally it's Spring and the pilgrims make contact with a Native American named Squanto who speaks English. Can anyone tell me what's weird about that interaction?"
Silence.
A girl finally speaks up, "ze knows english?"
"Yes! Isn't that crazy! Squanto was kidnapped by slave traders and brought to England, then he managed to learn English, and escape to London where he took an exploratory voyage back to America. It's nuts~! They should make a movie about it-"
[Time Out]. They did make a movie: It's very....90s. Also thanks to the magic of Disney films there was no need for Squanto to learn English, since, in the Magical Kingdom, all God's creatures speak Walt's language.
"So he teaches them how to hunt and fish and grow corn and if you think about it, he's being pretty nice considering it was Europeans who originally kidnapped him. By that next season the crops come in and the mayor of Plymouth hosts a big celebration. This was basically one of the first and last alliances between Europeans and Native Americans. Things got pretty depressing like 50 years after that."
"What's it like now? It's a lot like Christmas dinner here in France. You see all of your family whether you like it or not. It's also a pretty terrible time to be a Turkey since most families in America celebrate Thanksgiving. There's a lot of depressed Turkeys in November. You eat around 3 pm. Talk politics, watch football and then eat again. Then in the morning you have cake for breakfast. What's that? Yep, every family in American does that. It's tradition."
