A Pilgrim Thanksgiving

My son was led by his teacher in the "children's prayer" before his Thanksgiving Party Meal, because they were learning about the holiday.

God is great
God is good
Let us thank him for our food
By his hand we all are fed
Give us Lord our daily bread[1]

She was trying to teach the children that Thanksgiving was about giving thanks to God.  However, I could not help, but think about what the Pilgrims, English Separatists, would think about mostly unbaptized children reciting a prayer to commemorate their meal.  I am not convinced that reciting a prayer on a national holiday conformed to their Separatist beliefs.

1. The Pilgrims did not believe in reciting men's prayers.  They objected to the English Book of Common Prayer. The "prayer book" that you see mentioned in many recounts was a psalm-book written by  Henry Ainsworth.  Ainsworth specially prepared a psalm-book (published in 1612) for the Pilgrims in Holland based on his translation of the Book of Psalms.    Also of note the Pilgrims did not use the King James translation of the Bible published in 1611.  They used an older English translation developed in Geneva.[2][3]
2. The Pilgrims believed that marriage was a civil affair not a religious one.  Marriages were performed by civil servants/magistrates rather than clergy.  In the England of the Pilgrims' day you could actually be arrested for not being married in a church.  
3. The Pilgrims believed that children were mandated to be baptized to wipe away original sin.  However they only baptized children who had at least one parent in the church.  Those that did not have a parent in the church were only allowed to be baptized after they came of age making their own personal profession of faith.  The Pilgrims thought that groups like the Anabaptists deprived the Christian flock of young lambs.[4]
4. The Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas or even Easter. These were not Holy Days, but days invented by man to commemorate Jesus Christ.[5]

I know my son's teacher meant well.  She led a liturgical prayer in order to teach the children about the history of Thanksgiving.  This history, she viewed in very modern Christian terms.  I have been looking for who wrote the Children's prayer, but I have not been able to find out.  I thought the prayer might date to the 19th Century, but I can only find it in the 20th Century.  Thank you google books.

This is my point entirely.  The Pilgrims never would have prayed a prayer that was written centuries after their deaths.  Even if the prayer had been written in the 17th Century, their religious beliefs forbade them from reciting it.  The children who had married parents in the room, probably had some sort of religious ceremony.  The Pilgrims would have objected to those ceremonies.  They also would have been aghast at the great number of unbaptized children in attendance. I would be keeping my son outside the Christian flock, you see.  The novel point is that these English separatists did not believe in holidays like Christmas, Easter, and therefore Thanksgiving.  They might have a day of thanksgiving, but it never would have been an annual event.  In trying to teach my child the Christian history of Thanksgiving she failed on a number of points.   

What changed?  The Pilgrims were a small separatist group.  They were the extreme end of the puritan spectrum.  In 1629, Charles I dissolved Parliament opening the door for active persecution of the more moderate Puritans.  During what is known as the Great Migration, Puritans fled England to other countries.  They came to Massachusetts by the thousands, quickly outnumbering the little struggling colony at Plymouth.    Over the centuries these moderates would increasingly moderate until they were more open to annual holidays by man.[6][7]