Whilst discussing the importance of religious freedom today, the pilgrims became the topic of conversation. I suppose because of the time of year it was inevitable. I do not pretend to be an expert on the pilgrims. I have watched some documentaries and read some books. I’ve thumbed through William Bradford’s journal. So I can say that I know a little bit about them but again, far from an expert. First off; these people were ballsy. Plain and simple. I understand that they were basically religious psychopaths but you can’t deny that what they did took a hell of a lot of guts. They were much tougher than you or I and for that, they deserve a little street cred. The pilgrims were also a big bunch of ornery doofuses. So allow me to explain why.

1. Everyone hated them.

When they petitioned King James I for permission to sail to the new world and establish a colony, James couldn’t say “YES!” fast enough. They weren’t even living in England at the time! Let that sink in. That is how much this guy and basically every other English person hated these people. They were in Holland and apparently that wasn’t far away enough for James. At this time the Dutch were basically doing that thing you do when you are hosting a party and you want people to leave. You know what I mean? That thing where you start saying things like, “Alright well this was awesome, guys.” One time I literally had to tell people to go home. We had a party and no one looked like they were ready to leave so I straight up told my party guests, made up mainly of my friends, to go home. That’s basically where Holland was at with these folks by 1620. They’d only been there a few years but that was more than enough for people who think wooden shoes are a good idea to see these drips as a bad one. James tells them; ‘take a charter and go start a colony. If you are successful, great! More money for me and you people are across an ocean. If you fail, great! Failure means that you’re all dead and that’s A-OK in my book.” So they went to the New World.

2. The Mayflower / Lack of Imagination.

Here’s your choice. Two hours on the Mayflower or ten minutes in Hell? Honestly; it’s a toss up. There were two ships originally. The Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell started taking on water so the pilgrims that were aboard her transferred to the Mayflower. So it was overflowing with smelly, angry zealots. Fun. Apparently the Master of the Mayflower, Christopher Jones, even remarked on how they were shitty people. Stuck in the hold of a Dutch cargo fluyt with all the farting and burping and bad breath and sweaty pits of a group of people that no one in Europe would have pissed on if they were on fire, yeah no thanks. A little boy was born aboard the ship. They named him Oceanus. They named him this because they were on the Ocean and they were bereft of any sort of creativity. Don’t believe me? When they got here, they named every town after towns in England. They didn’t even attempt to come up with their own place names. Here is a short list of towns in my state. New London, Manchester, Derby, Redding, Greenwich, Norwich, Stratford, Bristol, Avon, Fairfield, Milford, Wethersfield, etc. No imagination whatsoever. Anyway, they were crappy travelers by all accounts. That smell though… I can’t even think about it without cringing.

3. They Had No Sense of Direction

They were supposed to land at the mouth of the Hudson river, which was the very northern edge of the Jamestown colony but they ended up in Massachusetts because like everyone that would eventually come from Mass., they were lazy and confused. Actually, the captain of the Mayflower basically just wanted to dump these creeps off of his ship so he could hightail it back to England. Can you blame him? Imagine being the captain of a cargo vessel that decides that it’d be alright to take a living cargo across the ocean. Now imagine that the cargo is going to spend the entire time telling you how you are going to hell for sneezing on the sabbath. They end up on Cape Cod, piss off the native tribes to the point where they have to leave within like a month. Sound’s about right. They head across the bay and BAM! Plymouth Rock, baby. The rest as they say, is history.

4. They Thanked God for Everything

What’s wrong with that? Well nothing, really. Although it becomes a problem when you start thanking God for things like the ability to rob graves and steal corn. “Dear Lord, thank you so much for allowing us to force a family into starvation next growing season. You are the best!” It is no secret that they were religious zealots but they took the whole “God wills it” thing to a new and disturbing level. They justified all of their shittiness on God willing it. I am fairly certain God wasn’t cool with nearly 90% of what these folks did but hey, it worked for them.

In the end it’s easy to crap on people 400 years in the past. They’re not around to defend themselves. We cannot take away the fact that what they did took real courage. Leaving everything you’ve ever known behind for a place far away that you know very little about takes some serious guts. For that, I doff my cap. Also, engraining the idea of freedom of and from religion in the bones of what would become the United States of America is pretty cool. So yeah I guess we can thank them for that as well.

But they were still jerks. Luckily some Catholics eventually came over and gave this place some spice.

To the pilgrims… you guys had some cojones. But man, you were jerks.