Puritans, Thanksgiving and the Old Testament

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

The passengers on the Mayflower who were Puritans were a group of English Protestants known as Separatists, or "Saints":The Puritans wanted to establish a new church in the New World where they could practice their religion without interference from the Church of England (Yes, the Church of England is now called the Episcopal Church in the United States, and its members are called Episcopalians:). They believed the Church of England needed reform, but they chose to remain within the church. 

37 of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower were Separatists living in Leiden, Netherlands. The Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620. The adult male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact on November 11, 1620 to establish order and civil society while waiting for a new patent to settle in New England. The passengers became the settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The colonists were unprepared for the harsh New England winters, and about half of them died in the first winter.  The Puritan colonists of Plymouth were not called "Pilgrims" until the early 19th century. 

Traveling with the Pilgrims were about two dozen non-separatist Puritans, whom the Pilgrims sometimes called “strangers,” a few servants, and a crew of 30 sailors — 102 passengers in all. After a rough crossing, the Mayflower arrived at the tip of Cape Cod on November 10, 1620.

To understand what motivated their journey, historians point back a century to King Henry VIII of England. When the Roman Catholic pope refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry severed relations with Rome and formed the Church of England, naming himself its supreme leader. Membership in the new church was mandatory.                               

                  First Thanksgiving in new country to become USA later

Puritans were readers of the Old Testament.  The Puritans were a Christian group that drew much of their ideology from the Bible, and their relationship to the Old Testament was complex: The Puritans saw themselves as God's chosen people, similar to the Israelites in the Bible. They believed they had escaped oppression in Europe and settled in America, their Promised Land, just as the Israelites escaped captivity in Egypt and settled in Canaan. Puritans believed that biblical types could be used to interpret their own experiences and historical situation. For example, they could identify with biblical figures like Adam, Noah, or Job to understand their own spiritual struggles. Puritans believed that their community was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and identified themselves as the "New Israel".

They read about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.  According to the Old Testament, the Jewish holiday most closely associated with giving thanks that Puritans would have referenced is Sukkot (also known as the Feast of Tabernacles), which is a harvest festival celebrated in the fall and considered a time to give thanks for the bounty of the land; many believe the Pilgrims modeled their Thanksgiving celebration after Sukkot. Sukkot is primarily found in the book of Leviticus, specifically in Leviticus 23:33-43, where the instructions for celebrating the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) are detailed.                                                           

       Decorating the family Sukkah before the attack that infamous Day Oct. 7th
                                                                     Sukkot's last day of celebration in 2023 was October 7th, the day that goes 

down in infamy, being young dancing people outside were slaughtered by Hamas 

terrorists, starting war events not wanted or dreamed of.  

Keeping of Sukkot is detailed in the Hebrew Bible (Nehemiah 8:13–18, Zechariah 14:16–19 and Leviticus 23:34–44); the Mishnah (Sukkah 1:1–5:8); the Tosefta (Sukkah 1:1–4:28); and the Jerusalem Talmud (Sukkah 1a–) and Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 2a–56b).  Jews consider the 1st 5 books to have been written by Moses.  It's also called the Pentateuch by Christians;  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.  This had been written in Hebrew, except solitary words in Genesis and Jeremiah and a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel which were written in Aramaic.  Puritans had to rely on translations of that day.  Only Jerome's Latin Vulgate of 4th century was available at this time for the Puritans.  It had been adopted by the Catholic Church.  Moses Arragel wrote it in Spanish but not until 1422.  

Puritans established grammar schools to prepare students for college and the ministry, and to read classical authors in their original languages. These schools emphasized Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  Judah Monis, an Italian Jew, was appointed as a Hebrew instructor at Harvard College in 1720. Monis taught Hebrew for 38 years.  Puritans read the Hebrew scriptures as the Christian Old Testament. Some Puritans studied the Jewish Kabbalah to better understand the Hebrew Bible.  The Puritans believed it was important to be able to read and understand the Bible. They established schools to educate the children of the colony, and the "Old Deluder Law" required towns to pay for teachers and send children to school.

The Puritan era is generally considered to have ended by 1740, but there is no consensus on the exact date. The term "Puritan" was used to describe New Englanders well past this time, even though the label was no longer accurate. 

 

       1621 Thanksgiving Day with the help of the Indians, or they might have starved to death:  A depiction of the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Image by J.L.G. Ferris/LOC/Creative Commons, a holiday with big differences from Sukkot, however:  Pastor John Robinson was the Puritan leader in Holland who encouraged his flock to board the Mayflower.  He didn't leave, but his son did, later on.  New England is loaded with Robinsons, who mostly came from Ireland very early on.    

1.  First, the Pilgrims did not believe in fixed holidays. In the words of Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University: “If it was a good season, they would announce a thanksgiving, but it was not Sukkot.”

2. Second, there was a crucial element of Sukkot the pilgrims neglected — and that was to build Sukkot. Neither do we have any record of them shaking lulav and etrog.

3.   Third, the Pilgrims were Christians. For them, the covenant at Calvary, sealed in the blood of Jesus, would have negated the covenant at Sinai. While they might have found spiritual inspiration in what they called the “Old Testament,” they would not have observed any Jewish rituals and certainly would not have observed any Jewish holidays.

So, was Thanksgiving the American Sukkot? Probably not.  Just like Chanukah and Christmas are not the same this year at all even though both fall on December 25th this year.  One's on a lunar calendar and the other on the solar calendar, which is our universal calendar except for Jewish holidays.  

However,  Native American cultures traditionally expressed gratitude to the Creator or the natural world for the food they harvested, often incorporating prayers and rituals of thanks before consuming meals or during harvest celebrations, signifying a deep respect for the land and its bounty; this practice of giving thanks was a central part of their daily lives, not just on a specific holiday like Thanksgiving as it is understood today.  Many Native American tribes viewed the natural world as sacred and believed that giving thanks to the source of life was essential.

Resource:

https://www.voanews.com/a/6199723.html

https://religionnews.com/2021/11/24/thanksgiving-sukkot/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot#:~:text=Keeping%20of%20Sukkot%20is%20detailed,(Sukkah%202a%E2%80%9356b).

Differences Between Merry Old England's Sexual Morals and the New World of Boston

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

We forget that our first ancestors to the settle  in Plymouth Rock spoke English as they were Englishmen who had moved to Holland, and finding that and the language inadequate, moved onward on the ship, the Mayflower.  The reason they were seekers of a better life for themselves was that they had left the British state Anglican religion  for their own stricter one that followed much of what the Old Testament had to offer.  England had been a Roman Catholic country until 1534 when Henry VIII had the religion become the Church of England with a few changes to the Catholic religion.  

Laura Ulrich b: 11 July 1938 in Sugar City, Idaho, a Pulitzer Prize author.  Her parents were John Thatcher and Alice Siddoway.  She was valedictorian from Utah, but also  Harvard educated and known for her study of early America and the women.  Her other book, “A Midwife’s Tale,” was later the basis for a PBS documentary film.  Ulrich self-identifies as an active feminist and Latter-day Saint (Mormon), and has written about her experiences.  She married Gael Ulrich, now emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University of New Hampshire. 

In the book, GOOD WIVES, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the author shows the difference in the morality of the new immigrant from England and the new settlers already in America who were very moral, especially sexually, unlike merry old England                             

 Ulrich gives us the example of an Englishman who hopped into the bed of a neighbor after testing her gullibility, and she didn't yield but told her mother who brought suit against him.  She explains that men were called roges (rogues)  and women were whores.  "For a woman, sexual reputation was everything, for a man, it was part of a larger pattern of responsibility.  

Pilgrim punishment;  put in the stocks.  

A whore bestowed her favors indiscriminately, denying any man exclusive right to her body.  A rogue tricked or forced a woman into submission with no regard for consequences.    The words mirror traditional gender relationships.  A woman gave, a man took."  Evidently the British Isles was made up of a lot of rogues.  Not so yet in Massachusetts.

Our early settlers were very very religious.  What surprised me was the importance of the Old Testament, our Jewish Torah and Tanakh. What my husband read from the Good Book every Shabbat when we sat down about the Good wife  in Proverbs 31: An accomplished woman who can find?  Far beyond pearls is her value.  her husband's heart relies on her, and he shall lack no fortune.  She bestows goodness upn him, never evil, all the days of her life.  She seeks wool and flax, and her hands work willingly.....etc.  

...was also used by the Pilgrims.  They were big admirers of Bathsheba, King David's love and wife.  King David is the author of all proverbs, which our Jewish history tells us.  This proverb expands on the virtues of the ideal wife, so all the Pilgrim women tried to follow in her footsteps.  Scriptural models can mean quite different things to different people, thus we have the differences between Christians and Jews.  Here, Proverbs 31 stands alone as a great model of behavior, but is a hard act to follow.  The good wife is so very good!  What energy she had!

To believe in Moloch as Canaanites did was to believe and accept human sacrifice;  the opposite of what Moses brought to the descendants of Abraham-the Jews who had been expulsed from England in  1290 and not allowed back in until 365 years later in 1655.  Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock by 1620.  They never met any Jews.  I wonder if they did in Holland.  That was quite the country in those days for Jews as well.  

Marranos (hidden Jews caused by the Spanish Inquisition of 1492) rather-people hiding the fact that they were Jews, started to settle in Amsterdam.  They started to settle in Holland in the Middle Ages because of the anti-Semitism in Germany. They had freedom of worship in Holland by the 17th century.  Dutch trade was expanding and that's what they were good at as a profession.  Sephardis were there first, followed by Ashkenazis later.  With the occupation of Holland by the French Revolutionary armies in 1796, the Dutch Jewry was formally emancipated.  

Also, they followed Leviticus 20, Any man from the Children of Israel and from the proselyte who lives with Israel, who shall give of his seed to Molech,(having intercourse with Canaanites who sacrified human beings- believing in false gods like Moloch-a statue)   (shall be put to death;   the people of the land shall pelt him with stones.   the Laws and Liberties of 1648 established the death penalty for adultery, yet defined the crime according to the marital status of the woman, reinforcing the old notion of a man's property rights in his wife. 

Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common, 1 June 1660. Public domain image by unknown artist. Mary Dyer (born Marie Barrett; c. 1611 – 1 June 1660) was an English and colonial American Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.  This shows the ultimate Puritans (Pilgrims) not allowing another Christian group in their town-the Quakers. 

When Peter Stuyvesant had to make a decision of whether to let a small boatload of Jewish refugees into New Amsterdam (New York), he said, absolutely not.  He had to eat his words and change his position, or not get a paycheck from Holland. 

In September 1654, 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam aboard the St Cathrien. The Jews had come from Recife in Northeast Brazil, where they lived under Dutch rule. The Portuguese captured Recife from the Dutch and expelled the Jews.  (Spanish Inquisition).  
When the Jews arrived the captain of the ship sued them for the money to pay for their passage. The local court sold their belonging and imprisoned two of the party.

Peter Stuyvesant the governor of the colony was not happy to receive the Jews. He described the Jews as "deceitful" and very "repugnant". Stuyvesant asked permission from the Dutch East India Company, who the colony belonged to remove the Jews from the settlement. The board, which included several Jewish investors, refused and instructed the governor to allow the new Jewish settlers to remain in New Amsterdam.

The 23 Jews who arrived are not the first Jews, to arrive in North America, but it is the first record we have of a group of men women and children arriving to make it their permanent home.

Peter Stuyvesant (also known as Pietrus Stuyvesant), the son of a clergyman of Friesland, was born in the Netherlands in 1592. Stuyvesant served in the Dutch Army before receiving his appointment as director-general of New Netherland in 1646. He had served in the West Indies and was governor of the colony of Curacoa. 

A married man who had sexual relations with an unmarried woman risked only a fine or a whipping for fornication.  A married woman risked death.  A single woman risked only a fine or a whipping ---and of course, pregnancy!  That also happened with our ancestors.  Again, these laws were written for Jews 4,000-350,00- years ago, and the Pilgrims were trying to understand and follow literally in the 1600s CE without any rabbinical advice.  

The Pilgrims were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Puritans went chiefly to New England, but small numbers went to other English colonies up and down the Atlantic.

Puritans played the leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from Massachusetts because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691.

 Puritanism ended early in the 18th century and before 1740 was replaced by the much milder Congregational church.  Within the United States, the model of Congregational churches was carried by migrating settlers from New England into New York, then into the Old Northwest, and further.                   

Norman Rockwell painting, Walking to Church, for Saturday Evening Post, could be of anyone's religious bent.    
            

 Unlike Presbyterians, Congregationalists practice congregational polity (from which they derive their name), which holds that the members of a local church have the right to decide their church's forms of worship and confessional statements, choose their own officers and administer their own affairs without any outside interference. Congregationalist polity is rooted in a foundational tenet of Congregationalism: the priesthood of believers. According to Congregationalist minister Charles Edward Jefferson, the priesthood of believers means that "Every believer is a priest and ... every seeking child of God is given directly wisdom, guidance, power."

Congregationalists have two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Unlike Baptists, Congregationalists practise infant baptism. The Lord's Supper is normally celebrated once or twice a month. Congregationalists do not use the sign of the cross or invoke the intercession of saints..

   The Ten Commandments in Hebrew on a Synagogue in Portland, Oregon.  Hopefully, Jewish men 13 and older can read them, and this is a Conservative synagogue.   

Today there has been arguments about showing a sign of the 10 Commandments.  "In two 5-4 votes, the Supreme Court ruled Monday it is constitutional to display the Ten Commandments on public property as long as the intent of the exhibit isn't pushing a religious agenda. After a report from The Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg, two advocates debate the rulings and their fallout."

Resource:  Good Wives, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, chapter 5, the Serpent Beguiled Me, p. 84-99. 

https://plimoth.org/for-students/homework-help/who-were-the-pilgrims

Claiming Rights to Land: This Is My Land

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Moses bartered with the Egyptian Pharaoh to free his slaves at the age of 80 in the year 1311 BCE, and they got to Canaan 40 years later in about the year 1270 BCE. He was told to do this by G-d. The people he was freeing, some being his kinfolk, this stiff-necked people, were to live on the land he was to take them to.  

  King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin, son of Kish,  claimed the land as the Israelite nation sometime between  1270 and 1010 BCE;  after which David of Judah, son of Jesse,  became King and so did his son, Solomon.  

The land was attacked by the Romans in 70 CE when they burned down the capital, Jerusalem and it's 2nd Temple of King Solomon. Judah, the northern part of Israel, was 1,340 years old by 70 CE.   The people knew of their heritage and that it was G-d who wanted them to live in this land.  

Jews had gone through much grief before 70 CE in trying to hold onto their kingdom.  They had the experience of being attacked by the Assyrians in  722-721 BCE and lost about  10,000 of their best people to exile then, and their Assyrian enemy was replaced later by the Babylonian enemy by 586 BCE and   a great part of the population then was also exiled to Babylonia.  Then some returned by 538 BCE to join those who were able to remain.  

Jews have been able remain all this time in the land since 70 CE, not as a nation but living in their ancient cities such as Safed and Jerusalem.                                    

 By May 14, 1948 CE, they were able to announce their 2nd rebirth as a nation once more; a haven for Jews, rebirthed for Jews who have been without a country since 70 CE, 1,950 years of existence but rarely as a citizen of any country.  They've become the perfect blend of the East and the West.   Their  history is remembered in the plant, "Wandering Jew."  Jews are returning from all 4 corners of the world, something not only prophesized but expected and needed to happen.  

In 1620, a small sailing ship, the Mayflower, sailed for the east coast of North America with about 100 passengers, some being Pilgrims.  They landed in Plymouth Rock, to be later called Massachusetts.  By 1630, a fleet of ships also sailed there.  They  claimed the East coast as a country by 1776 and it  filled the whole part of the continent and continues to this day as the United States of America.  It  will be a young  245 years old next year.  

                                                   

 Judah's Jerusalem  was over 1,000 years older when it was burned by the Romans!  Can we imagine what it's like to live in a country that is 1300 years old?  England is a little older than the USA.  

The kingdom of England – with roughly the same borders as exist today – originated in the 10th century. It was created when the West Saxon kings extended their power over southern Britain.  That would be in the 900s. The Norman Conquest was in 1066.  The Conquest was 954 years ago. (The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of Normans, Bretons, Flemish, and men from other French provinces, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled, William the Conqueror.) People have changed since then but so has our technical advances.  Could the English leave England permanently?  As they have done so, we see their religion is not tied to England like it is for the Jewish people.  This shows the difference in attitudes towards a country.  

This was a rare group of people who sailed on the little Mayflower.  They were living in Holland but were immigrants from England who were angry because they were not allowed to practice their Christian religion in  a way slightly different from the established Episcopalian religion in that they studied the Old Testament and admired the Jews, a people that Christianity had said to have replaced in about Rome's 3rd meeting of establishing this new religion-started pretty much by an Emperor's mother, Helena. Then again, Episcopalians were a branch developed from Catholicism, Rome's first rendition of the religion, by one of the English kings.  These English Pilgrims thought they were also on a journey similar to the Jewish Exodus, coming to a new home. 

Woodie Guthrie felt so strongly about the USA that he wrote: 

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From the California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s

                                                

Jews could sing the same song only theirs would cover,. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’” (Genesis 15:18). The ‘river of Egypt’ most likely refers to one of the tributaries of the Nile. The word in Hebrew ‘nahar’ denotes a large river and this is how early Aramaic translations along with Jewish commentaries identify the location (See 1 Chronicles 13:5). The Euphrates begins in Turkey and flows through Syria and Iraq before entering the Persian Gulf. The April 1920 League of Nations plan followed those directions pretty much.  

Both Christianity and Islam have copied much of their religion from Judaism, the mother of the two religions.  Yet both seem to have a hard time abiding this older religion, both feeling they have replaced her and she is no longer necessary.  This gives impetus to holding on to her all the more by her adherents, a religion established by the fact of the mother being Jewish and then so are her children.  

Hopefully the USA and other countries can see that after having a nation for so long, one does not forget it or want to forget it.  It's a part of the culture; of the prayers, and part of our ancient history.  Unlike many people, Jews do have a validated history which is what the "Old Testament" is; history of a people, of its wars, loves, errors, and happy existence.  Even digs by archeologists are proving that this history is correct.                                                     

 

Add 1,000 years onto the USA's life and then take away many of its population and see how they would feel about regaining their land, their New York City or Los Angeles.  They wouldn't give it up without a great fight.  For one's country usually stands for certain things, certain rights and ethics that others may not have accepted. 

                                                     

 This is our claim to the land, Israel;  land of the Jews which is over 3,000 years old.  Can we fathom such an age, a length of time? This land is My Land.                                                

Today we see Armenia and Azerbaijan fighting over land, a little piece between them, and they've been fighting for  years.   Fighting broke out between the two regular armies of Armenia and Azerbaijan over a disputed territory on 27 September. The conflict spread rapidly. Urban areas have been heavily bombed and shelled, including Stepanakert, the largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh with a population of 55,000, and Ganja, the second-largest city in Azerbaijan, 100 km further east, which has a population of 350,000. Cluster munitions, on which HI obtained a ban under the Oslo Convention in 2008, have been used in Stepanakert. If the conflict continues to escalate, it could have disastrous humanitarian consequences for civilians.

Armenia has had Jews living there since Solomon's Temple was first destroyed by the Assyrians.  Ties between these Jews and those of the 2nd Temple destruction continued.  One of Herod's grandsons was Aristobulus, king of Little Armenia by Nero, while 2 other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia. Armenian Christians have lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century, and there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City.

 

Azerbaijan, their neighbor, is now divided between the Azerbaijan Republic and Iran.  Artaxerxes III settled Jewish prisoners in Hyrcania within the area of Azerbaijan in 342 BCE.  Jews lived in the town of Berdea in the 7th -10th centuries and in the 11th-12th centuries occupied important position.  Many were adherents of the pseudo-messiah ALROY.  They continued to flourish when the Mongols entered in the 13th century but after the latter embraced Islam, most of them apostatized.  

In 1926, there were in Azerbaijan some 19,000 Jews speaking a Persian dialect.  In 1979 there were 35,497 Jews living here. 

They are both old countries and fight for land they think is theirs.  Palestinians have not been on the land a long time.  Natives who had worked the land sold out to Jews who paid outlandishly high prices for it, as it was sacred to them.  We don't want this same situation of fighting over the land like what has been already going on for the past 72 years in an Israel-Palestine venture.   

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://hi-canada.org/en/news/armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-hi-assesses-needs-of-displaced-people?gclid=CjwKCAiAwrf-BRA9EiwAUWwKXq7mQ0MSmsrnnylp36CzIHPEdFOz4l35_d9p4j_Subt8ujc5PgRpxRoCTgwQAvD_BwE 

Tanakh, Stone Edition. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England

Why The Jews?, by Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin, just in general-reading 

Europe, Going Backwards in Time While USA Keeps on Going Forwards

The Romans were not the 1st to have bathing in their lives. The earliest discovered plumbing systems date back to nearly 6000 years ago near the Indus River Valley in India where archaeologists actually discovered copper water pipes in the excavation of the ruins of a palace in the vicinity. However, if we fast forward 3000 years ahead, this is about the time that the first ‘ancestral’ pedestal tub was unearthed on the island of Crete, it measured at five feet long, was made of hard pottery, and its shape resembled our modern 19th-century claw foot tub.

The Romans had built several public bathhouses throughout their empire, including the famous one in the eponymous town of Bath, England. Many of these survived, at least in part, and several more were established, which the general public in the Middle Ages could use to get clean. In Southward alone, across the Thames from London, one had the choice of 18 different hot baths.

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Wherever the Roman army went, they brought bathing, even to Britain.
It was their form of relaxation.  " In both 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar had invaded Britain with the aim of conquest.  " "The Britains") was the area of the island of Great Britain that was governed by the Roman Empire, from 43 to 410 AD. It comprised almost all of England and Wales and, for a short period, southern Scotland."

Europe went through the Dark Ages after being in enlightened ones believing in bathing.  The Romans enjoyed bathing and had something like shallow swimming pools in their estates where they entertained while getting cleaner.  

"Dark Ages , the early medieval period of western European history—specifically, the time (476–800 CE) when there was no Roman (or Holy Roman) emperor in the West or, more generally, the period between about 500 and 1000, which was marked by frequent warfare.  People were amazing if they bathed once a year!  Read "FOREVER AMBER" to get a feel of those times of the Medieval times, perhaps even with worse bathing abilities. .  

If people could afford a to have private bath – and not many could – they would use a wooden tub that could also have a tent-like cloth on top of it.

St Fintan of Clonenagh was said to take a bath only once a year, just before Easter, for twenty-four years. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxons believed that the Vikings were overly concerned with cleanliness since they took a bath once a week!"  Well, the Vikings are another story, not to be included as the Europeans this time, then.  They were too clean.
                             

                                        

Our American early immigrants were known to take a bath once a week on a Saturday night.  They kept a wooden tub for the occasion, and probably the water was used by the whole family; parents first.  In their bedrooms they kept a pitcher of water and a bowl for freshening up that are now antique pieces, and quite fetching at that.    

Then along comes Europe, with the Brits having been civilized by the Romans enough to fight for them, and they rarely bathed.  What they did was employ the French practice of using perfumes on top of sweat and odor in a vain attempt to alter it.  "

Early summer AD 43

Emperor Claudius orders the invasion of Britain

"An army of four legions" (20,000 men) "and approximately 20,000 auxiliaries, commanded by senator Aulus Plautius, landed at Richborough, Kent. The Romans met a large army of Britons, under the Catuvellauni kings Caratacus and his brother Togodumnus, on the River Medway, Kent. The Britons were defeated in a two-day battle, then again shortly afterwards on the Thames. Togodumnus died and Caratacus withdrew to more defensible terrain to the west. "                                                                               

We broke off from the English who had only one approved way of believing in G-d, and that was the king's way, who needed to divorce his latest wife when divorce wasn't allowed, so being the king-changed the rules of the country's religion.  That was fine with most of the people, but when it came to 1600 and people called the Puritans wanted a more pure form of religion-theirs-practiced in the church, weren't allowed to do it.  What did they do?  Move to the more enlightened country of The Netherlands (Holland) and practice what they had been preaching.  
                                                                           

Leaving Holland for Massachusetts in 1620 on Mayflower and Speedwell.  
It wasn't until 1883 that the bathtub would be invented. "

In 1883, an American man by the name of John Michael Kohler invented the world's first bathtub. He took a cast-iron horse trough and added four decorative feet to the bottom of it and covered it in an enamel finish.  I always 

thought it was Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). He was known to take air baths for health.  

They came over on the Mayflower in 1620, a brave lot, most of which would die withing the next year of landing there, but they had a dream of freedom of religion (their religion.)
                                                                         
When it came time for a small boatload of Sephardic Jews to arrive in their waters, they weren't allowed to land because they were Jews.  It took their boss back in Holland to explain to the religious freedom fighters of New Amsterdam that this boat happened to have some of the owners of the company in it, and yes, they were Jewish.  Did they want to continue working under their employment?  The answer was in allowing them to land.                                 

Dressed in Blue were the American soldiers,
our Continental army

                                                                       

Dressed in red were the British soldiers

Our USA flag made by Betsy Ross by hand for 1776 and George Washington
The 13 stars were for the 13 colonies that united as one.
We had to fight against the British (England) to gain our independence.  

Now so many Americans think that what Europe does and say is the correct way to be.  They are so-gauche.  Yet this was the people who we had left, seeking a new land and ways of doing things.  242 years ago we celebrated our American 1st birthday on July 4, 1776.  We've led the charge and came to the rescue of Europe in WWI from 1914 to 1917, and again WWII from 1941 to 1945, and we've led the world in many ways before and after.  Why have we suddenly stopped being creative in our thinking and feel we must bow to the Europeans?  They've been following our lead!  

                                                 

The Mayflower was hired in London, and sailed from London to Southampton in July 1620 to begin loading food and supplies for the voyage--much of which was  purchased at Southampton.  The Pilgrims were mostly still living in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands.  They hired a ship called the Speedwell to take them from Delfshaven, the Netherlands, to Southampton, England, to meet up with the Mayflower.  The two ships planned to sail together to Northern Virginia.  The Speedwell departed Delfthaven on July 22, and arrived at Southampton, where they found the Mayflower. There were 102 passengers, and the crew is estimated to have been about 30, but the exact number is unknown.  All must have been daring and brave to take such a trip.  

      The Mayflower had a boatload in creative thinkers on it.  Notice that they left Europe so they could continue and prosper; both in their religion and in life. 
                                                         

John Carver, deacon of their church, signed.  William Bradford, early convert to their Separatist Church, signed.  His wife drowned after  boarding.  Edward Winslow, wealthy churchman, signed.  William Brewster was part of execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and member of this church as a ruling elder, signed. It was ratified by forty-one men on board the Pilgrim ship Mayflower on November 11, 1620 while anchored at Cape Cod, now Provincetown Harbor in Massachusetts.  

They wrote up the MAYFLOWER COMPACT on how to live in the new world and understand this before they even set foot on the soil.  It was a good start.  Only free adult males could sign the compact in those days.  The concept of freeman went back centuries in England to describe a man who was not a serf, but who enjoyed the freedom of a town.  Later it expanded to be a shareholder in a corporation.  The Massachusetts Bay Corporation  elected assistants annually, and the freemen had the supreme legislative power.  In the Winthrop Fleet of ships that came over in 1630, only ones who were freemen were the governor, deputy governor, and some of the 18 assistants.  
                                                                       

"The Winthrop Fleet was a group of 11 ships led by John Winthrop out of a total of 16 funded by the Massachusetts Bay Company which together carried between 700 and 1,000 Puritans plus livestock and provisions from England to New England over the summer of 1630, during the first period of the Great Migration."  Thus was the start of our nation.  

There was a reason why the first to this land were from Britain.  It was an island nation, quite used to sailing in their ships.  Though they may have taken a bath in the ocean once in a while and not bothered with bathing per se, they were good at their craft of sailing.  The Winthrop Fleet came to rescue the Mayflower's people, but were too late to save all of them.  They did come more prepared with more ships, though.  Later on the other Europeans will find their way here ...and in other ships.  T.  

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Britain
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/27/bathing-middle-ages/
http://mayflowerhistory.com/voyage/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact_signatories