At the Phillips home, this year’s Thanksgiving was a three-day celebration of praise, rejoicing, prayers, and family traditions including Pilgrim quizzes, Bible memorization contests, the reading of Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation, the playing of glorious home-spun music, the waging of war with various board games of global domination and strategy, extremely (I emphasize extremely) vigorous wrestling matches, boar spear competitions, rope climbing games, decorative arts, and, of course, feasting. There were twenty-two around the table for Thanksgiving Day proper and over a hundred the following Saturday. In the above image, faithful pilgrim daughters Jubilee and Faith pause for their daddy’s incessant picture taking.

Our practice during the meal is to give those at the table opportunity to share a providence of God, a poem of praise, or a testimony of thanksgiving, and (British Parliamentary style) to share our approval with hearty verbal affirmation and pounding of the table with our fists. Here, beloved friend Geoff Botkin (a man without whom there would have been no League of Grateful Sons film this year) offers words of spiritual encouragement and a few poems for the pilgrims present at the table.

A special blessing of this Thanksgiving was to have three experienced harpists (and a few harpists in training) present to bless us with a rich repertoire of beautiful music from psalms of praise to Flamenco-like Spanish compositions. In the above picture, Liberty sits with friend Lourdes who is about to play an eleventh-century Scottish march.

Anna Sophia and Elizabeth blessed the home with glorious harp duets.

Under the careful instruction of our accomplished coach Andrei Samoradov, nine of us have been pursuing skills at fencing. On Thanksgiving day, the épées were drawn and maneuvers were demonstrated for those in attendance at the celebration. One of our beloved friends and co-laborers is Vision Forum intern Philip Bradrick (right) who shares a few basic moves with friend David.

A highlight of the day was the annual boar spear throwing competition for our young men. This particular spear is capable of taking down a 400-pound hog. The goal is to throw the spear such that it sticks into the side of a tree. Throwing the heavy spear accurately is no small task. In the above picture, older brother Chance Winberry demonstrates the right procedure to his younger brother.

Do not trifle with a man with a spear in his hands.

Isaac (recently arrived from the land of the Kiwis) demonstrates a warrior’s form — no doubt learned from the Maori’s of New Zealand.

Out-of focus, but an example of the boar spear when airborne.

Some of our young ladies took a whack at it as well...

...and demonstrated great promise.

In 2003, the Lord was kind to extend to me the blessing of acquiring from an antiquarian dealer a collection of about seventy-five carefully preserved letters drafted between the years 1908 and 1911. The collection tracks the courtship of a young man writing to his intended bride (Agnes). Also included in the set were a few letters to his mother. The collection especially interested me because the author of the letters was an attorney who lived on the same general street area in Boston where my grandparents and father would one day live. The letters are long and full of fascinating information about life ninety-five-plus years ago. Some of our ladies gathered to read the letters dating to Thanksgiving time in 1908-1910.

The conquest of civilization as we know it is serious business for these young men.

Our local congregation has been studying the Book of James. As part of the study, we are memorizing the entire book. Last weekend and on this Thanksgiving celebration I offered a silver dollar to each person who memorized two chapters. I was so delighted to see the number of faithful sons and daughters who had accomplished the task. Once properly memorized, the Word of God will impact a man throughout the course of his life, and will not easily be forgotten. Here, Jubilee and I listen to one of the young ladies recite James.

Here, four young men plot strategy on how to take down 170-pound Philip in a five-minute, four-on-one wrestling match of boys vs. brawn.... Brawn won.

Thank God for our dear pilgrim mothers of vision.

Thank God also for the big girls who take the time to tell stories to the little girls.