"Pilgrims Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate.."

The FIrst Thanksgiving Concert

The winter of 1620 had been brutal in the Plymouth Colony.

Most of the women had died, which meant men had to load the dirty dishes into the streams themselves and pick their own socks up off the cabin floors.  There was only one single woman of marriageable age, the comely and independent-minded Priscilla Mullins, who was the subject of much cruel gossip.  

“You won’t believeth this, but when I was walking past Priscilla’s place yesterday she was plucking a turkey with her sleeves pushed up, exposing her elbows for all the world to see,” the foul-tempered Chastity Smyth said. “For this, the Puritans lefteth England?”

“Slut,” Patience Goodwin said.

“Moreover, she is always singing songs she hath made up herself,” Chastity said. ‘Romeo taketh me somewhere we can be alone/ I'll be waiting, all there's left to do is run.’ And once that song getteth into your head, you can not getteth it out.   Everybody on the Mayflower did be singing it. I finally had to speak up, ‘Pilgrims, you idiots -- this song beith about shtupping!’”

It was at this very moment that the beauteous Priscilla went flouncing by, her zither strapped to her back.

“Pilgrims gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake -- shake it off,” Priscilla sang.

“Did you see that?” Chastity said. “Priscilla did swingeth her hips excessively when she walked by. That’s another thing associated with shtupping. I think.”

The women were not the only ones in Plymouth taking note of Priscilla. Further down the mud-paved street, roomies Miles Standish, a military man who was shy around the ladies, and John Alden, a barrel-maker of some repute, put down their respective hickory ramrods and oak staves to admire Priscilla as she sashayed past.

“Oh, the sublime Priscilla,” Miles said. “My heart doth beat faster whenever I see her, but I dare not approach. It is said she had eleven serious boyfriends on the Mayflower – and it was but a 65-day voyage. Could you go to her and tell her that she frequenteth my dreams? Leaving out the part about the Kleenex.”

“Miles, please, get a grip,” John said. “Priscilla is a great girl.  I find her songs catchy --So make the friendship bracelet/Take the moment and taste it. It’s too bad Puritans are against adornment because friendship bracelets would be cool. We could make them from tiny seashells and write sweet nothings for those we cherish: “Stocks or pillory?”  “Burn witch burn.” “If you don’t work, you don’t eat”.  But we have serious problems in the colony. Winter is coming and we have naught in the food stores but turnips and potatoes. We can’t expect people to keep eating lobster – it’s garbage food. We need to kill some of those deer, a terrible nuisance which have lately been devouring our crops and causing collisions with horse carts on the Mass. Pike  --”

“Really?” Miles interrupted. “Because I’ve been thinking about it and the deer were here first. It’s their territory, we humans are the interlopers. What if we switched to a vegetarian diet -- .”

John stepped forward and slapped Miles smartly across the face.

“Thank you, I needed that,” Miles said. “In fact, I found it rather arousing. I wonder if Priscilla is into submissives?”

“We need the help of the Wampanoag,” John said, ignoring this lewd patter. “And with earlier colonizers infecting them with Yellow Fever and trying to steal their land, they have been stand-offish of late. I sent five messages to Massasoit about getting together for coffee and he’s ignored me -- and he knows perfectly well that I always bring pastry. But wait a minute, Miles – those friendship bracelets and the fair Priscilla’s musical talents – I think we might be oneth to something there.”

And so the first Thanksgiving concert, starring Priscilla Mullins, came to be, with 90 members of the Wampanoag nation in merry attendance. This was not a tough get because the Wampanoag, unbeknownst to the Pilgrims, had heard Priscilla singing and were major fans. They often paddled their canoes up the Agawam River singing, “I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake it off”, pausing to twerk when they reached land.  They also appreciated Priscilla’s equal rights work.  

The colorful friendship bracelets, with the words,  “Casinos” and “Legalize Gambling” for the Wampanoag and -- for the colonists --  “Lobster is better, shmuck”, were a great hit.

John Alden did not tell Priscilla Mullins of Miles Standish’s feelings for her – John was so smitten with the New World’s first Colonial/Native American crossover star that he married the fair Priscilla himself.  But everything turned out okay because the foul-tempered Chastity Smyth, after becoming widowed, hooked up with Miles.  And she was very much into submissives.