Sybil Bruncheon's "Little Known History for the Holidays!"...

Did you know that the Mayflower and the Pilgrims first landed in Provincetown on Cape Cod?... NOT in Plymouth as you were all taught in grade school! As a matter of fact, several of Mummie's ancestors decided against sailing the extra distance on to the "mainland" of the New World, and stayed on with many native Americans in the lovely topography and seashore of what would very soon become Provincetown with its picturesque views! No wonder it became the festive, frisky, fun, and FABULOUS center of New England gay life we know today!.. not at all like the forlorn life that the other pilgrims went on to live in Plymouth with witch trials, executions, and paranoia that followed almost immediately! PILGRIMS! They were all PILLS, and certainly GRIM! Ah well.... This is one of those many things that I'm thankful for on Thanksgiving! That I came from the right side of the tracks... or the BAY, as the case may be! LOLOLOL! <3

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Sybil Bruncheon's "A Whole Month Of THANKSGIVING!": My Family's Ties to Thanksgiving...

When the Mayflower reached the new world, it first landed at the tip pf Cape Cod where the settlement of Provincetown was built! Half of my ancestors went on to Plymouth... but the rest stayed in Provincetown!!!!...which explains the difference in each branch of my family... Pil-GRIMS vs. Pil-CHEERFULS!!!!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!"... Ethan & Noah...

... For years after they arrived on the New England shores of the New World, the Puritans had been mocked by the Native Americans who were already here. Called "Pilgrims", they would hear the Indians snicker at dinner time about how they were all "pills" and certainly very "grim". Their clothes, demeanor, work habits, and forlorn jokes and songs without melodies did nothing to improve their standing, and it took a toll on their livelihoods both on Cape Cod and in Plymouth where many of them settled. Nightclubs like "The Jolly Prayer-Man", "Old Mistress Silly's", "Reverend Jokester's Joint", and "The What's ALE-ING You Bar & Grill" all closed after only a few months. Even little shops like the "Lamb of Peace O' Cake Cottage" and the "SIN-lessly Almost Delicious Semi-Sweets Hovel" couldn't survive the cold and dour Winter or the half-hearted business that came their way. The biggest laughs were usually heard at the local blacksmith's forge and only when Josiah Industrious Howard hit his thumb with a mallet.... (although he DID draw huge crowds of listeners who would sit patiently for days to hear him injure himself at which point he would be met with shrieks of laughter and wild applause, sometimes with 10 minute standing-ovations...and encores!).... It was in this sad and grey climate that some of the settlers would escape for a much-needed taste of passion, life, love, and a little romance.... Oh, how lucky, how very lucky Ethan Nickerson and Noah Paumgartner were to find each other and to discover a mutual interest over near Fog Hollow Marsh on that chilly November afternoon.... They'd always look back on November 16, 1640 as a lovely first date at anniversary time..

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE.... HALLELUJAH!!”…

OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE!!!..... Our history books all say that when the Pilgrim forefathers first sailed into Cape Cod, they were stunned by the abundance of the New World. This quote from Miles Standish is from a missive to Goody Simplicity Rumplebum; "Yay verily, Mistress, it was owr great goode fortune for wich we prayed our harty thankings, that wen wee landed on the sanddee shor, we did see cuttle fish, clambagoes, winkles, erster shellabones, tunettes, crinkletoes, crays, bombottoms, toozly-toos, and all manour of eatables in vast-yee numbers so that every Christ-ian sole might eet his fill, man, woman and childe!... why even the crabbes and lobsters seemed to walk ashore to greet us when we showed them our poles.... Hallelujah! We all have yowled our gratefull Hallelujah!"...

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE!!”.... TO BE? ..OR NOT TO BE?...

Facebook Friends!!... so many of you have heard about the Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth in 1620 and how somber, sober, and serious they were.... humorless, colorless, dour, judgemental. But what everyone forgets is that the Mayflower first landed on the tip of Cape Cod at what later became Provincetown. And the pilgrims who decided to stay THERE and NOT go on to Plymouth were a very different mindset! Fun, funny, capricious, stylish, lovers of fine food and fashion, music, dancing, parties, practical jokes, dirty limericks about candle-makers and farmers' daughters!...well, you get the idea. I mean, you HAVE heard about Provincetown, right?

Well, maybe you're a descendant of one of those two different Pilgrim groups?? ....at Thanksgiving time, ask yourself, which kind of person are YOU? Do you drown your sorrows at the dinner table in yam casserole with baby marshmallows while Uncle Fred tells his stupid knock-knock jokes for the umpteenth time? Do you nod politely and take Cousin Edith's hand over the Cheez-Whiz appetizers while she tearfully recalls being stood up for her junior prom 37 years ago? Do you fall asleep on the sofa with a bowl of stuffing sitting on your belly waiting for you to snack on later "aftah da game"?

...OR, Do you make your dinner guests play fun party games like spin the bottle, strip poker, and pin the tail on the donkey with Mrs. Ferguson from next door as "the Donkey"? Do the mince, and pumpkin pies end up being the ammo in a giant pie-fight with your boss and his wife... and your housepets? Do you fantasize about shopping on Black Friday at Van Cleef and Arpels for a diamond brooch shaped like a turkey, a teepee, or the state of Massachusetts??...

It's a choice folks... Are you a PILL and very GRIM??... or do you drop water balloons on Rihanna in the Macy's parade as it goes by your apartment building?? Guess which branch of the pilgrims Mummie is a descendant of, and why she calls herself a Pil-CHEERFUL!.... and why I love Provincetown so! YAHOO!!!!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Thanksgiving Heritage"... A PRAYER FROM REVEREND SIMPLICITY CARFEATHERS (1620)…

Oh, Merciful Lamb, please let us, on this first Thanksgiving, be grateful for our yam and twig casserole...especially since Thou hath granted us a festive little garnish of pine needles which we will apportion to each and every one of Thine worshipful diners in a portion not greater than one and one half needle-ettes per soul. Also, remindeth us to be glad of heart at the sight of the turnip, radish, and skittle-beetle soufflé which our Indian brethren have prepared with loving and unwashéd hands and left at the back-flap of our tent sometime in the last three days.... And in a hollowed out birch-bark serving dish which we have been told we may keep as a "house-warming" present! We did indeed warm our home by burning it in a hole in the middle of the room. And thank You blesséd Soul of Peace for helping us to extinguish the flames which spreadeth to the canvas by smiting it with sticks as if it were the accurséd hind-quarters of Satan himself (which it very well may have been since Goody Dalrymple says that she smelled infernal farting and saw in the rising smoke the face of a goat with three horns that recited French limericks!). Anyway...we put out the fire, and now have a nice view of the stars at night!

Finally, oh Patient Saviour, we thank Thee for the sight at least of a plump turkey which we would have prepared for our holiday repast had it not pecked out the left eye of Reverend Punctuality Throckmorton during his interminable sermon on "Edibles And Their Free-Will To Embrace Low-Calorie Salvation...OR NOT!"...it was during the declamation and response section of his endless exhortation to "dessert sinlessly" that the turkey lunged at the blesséd Reverend and un-eyed him as it scaped our lean-to prayer-hut! The entire congregation tried to bolster the Pastor's challenged morale by gathering feathers, oak leaves, river mud, and hair-combings to fashion a graven image of a turkey for him to kick and dismember to purge his righteous anger!!

Oh, Serene Guide of our Spirits!... The Reverend in his humble radiance, forgave the facsimile for its transgression against his extremely modest face, and said that one eye still allowed him to see the wonders of our new home here in the new world and would keep him from stubbing his bunion on that damnable tree-stump near the entryway to our settlement as he has done thrice-times this very week when arising in the middle of the night to make his water away from prying eyes and pointing fingers. The mud-and-rubbish turkey now sits in pride-of-place on said tree-stump as a decoration for our feast!! ...and much thanks hath been yowled up to the Heavens along with songs and gourd rattling! We all plan to take our once-yearly bath after the cranberry-cricket flan.... Halleluiah!!!! Halleluiah!!!! OHHHH...HALLELUUUU-IAH!!!!

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Sybil Bruncheon’s OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: Joyous, yes... but not TOO joyous!

Yes, Friends, it's time for another deeply moving tale from Thanksgivings past... Here we have Reverend Eloysius Wholesomeness Cruller, pastor of The Fairley-Famished Lamb of Blessedness congregation in Sadley Corners. Known for his fiery sermons that had a strangely calming effect on his parishioners (especially the ones with insomnia, anxiety disorders, or ...um, "demon fidgets"), he was nevertheless given to "visions" and dire predictions concerning oblong vegetables shaped like royal persons, and geese speaking Flemish. Although he was considered eccentric, many locals felt that he had some sort of gift and would heed his advice on sore throat cures, bunions, involuntary mooing, and frizzy hair.

Unmarried until he was in his late forties, he finally met Goody Tolerance Mayhew from a neighboring hamlet, and they were wed in a lovely though somber ceremony overseen by Reverend Punctuality McPhee. The happy celebrants feasted on spoonfuls of dried corn, yarrow roots, day-old goat's milk, and currants (or were they fettle beetles?)... oh, what a thankful occasion it was for everyone present, and earnest prayers, hearty exhortations, and ...yes, tuneful hymns (with actual tunes in them!) were offered up to the leaky rafters. And then Reverend and Goody Cruller withdrew to begin their meditative honeymoon .......after taking their once-a-year bath.

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