American Fun by John Beckman Read Free Book Online Page A

spite of Puritan laws. In a land of danger and opportunity, they would often have it at high personal risk. And in an ever growing and complicated society, flooded with classes and races and cultures, where the laws were in flux, when laws applied at all, the frontier was expanding, and thecompeting social systems weren’t held in check by legal rituals like Saturnalia, Americans learned to have fun with friends and aliens whose styles and differences revved up the pleasure. In point of fact, as this history aims to show, these necessary rebellions, these tantalizing risks, and these extraordinary prospects for open gathering are part and parcel of the fun itself. And yet, by the same token (and this is essential),it has always remained such a simple pleasure. It requires only that you get involved—throw in a joke, raise your voice in song, take up a ribbon and give it a go with one of the Maypole’s merry, merry boyes. It may be illegal, dangerous, rebellious, but all of these things give tingles of freedom when you’re a bondservant or gentleman or Massachusett lost in the merry, merry dance. Thomas Morton’s fun, which would mature down the centuries into American fun, sprang from conflicts and dangerous differences. It was the fun of mixing, not the comfort of recoiling into a gated community. All it needed was “harmles mirth,” an attitude Morton found “much distasted of the precise Separatists,” who “troubl[ed] their braines more then reason would require over things that are indifferent.”
    It makes sense that theFirst Thanksgiving, and not May Day at Merry Mount, should become a national holiday, though the event doesn’t rate a mention in Bradford’s honored history. Thanksgiving gives the impression that even the most authoritarian system can reconcile itself with America’s “savage” side, when in fact the event was a wary détente that would fall to pieces during King Philip’s War. The First Thanksgiving, as such, is a wishful anodyne to rival the Mayflower Compact’s “democracy.” Much as laws contain the people’s excesses, treaties ensure a grimace of tolerance among aggrieved and mistrustful nations. It’s an American tradition worth recognizing: laws, treaties, prisons, and gallows undergird a powerful empire. They try to ensure a measure of fairness, and they keep the trains running on time. But there is also a necessary Americanrowdiness that is more consistent with Merry Mount. A nation that has maintained deep currents of civility throughout its rough history of Indian massacre, institutionalized slavery, and unpopular waves of immigration should also look to the successful experiments that have brought it into states of feverous harmony—dangerous intimacy—mutual enjoyment. Radical movements like Thomas Morton’s launched their snowballs at cranky despots and let the people in on their joke: they posted their poems, published their books, performed their dances, whipped up the crowds. They celebrated civility
outside
the law. In centuries to follow, the ways such practices have lured people together have grown ever more daring, widespread,
sustained,
and the best ones have been an absolute blast. The best ones have become the American Way.
    ……………
    THE WAY BRADFORD TELLS IT , the earth was still warm from all the stamping and dancing when Plymouth’s militia made their ambush. In fact they waited until the following summer, June of 1628. After an unrecorded year of stormy disapproval, Standish and his men stormed in from the woods and found Morton’s maskers ready for battle—doors locked, guns loaded, bullets and powder laid on the table. In Bradford’s version, the wights were too “over armed with drinke” to work their guns, so they peaceably handed them over to Standish. In Morton’s version, he and his men, having been warned in advance by Indians, stood the militia down at gunpoint. They shouted negotiations through the windows and brokered