William Bradford’s Thanksgiving Pyramid Scheme

Greetings, fellow Puritans. My name is William Bradford, and I want to talk to you about an exciting new opportunity that hath the potential to transform your Puritan life. Let me ask you a question: Do you want to worship God in your own way? Are you tired of some Bishop of the Church of England telling you when and where you can take the sacraments and whether those sacraments are or are not the actual body and blood of our Lord?

Picture this: it’s 4 a.m. on a Monday. You’re in church, as usual. You look up at the altar and — what’s this? There’s no golden or marble graven images, just humble wooden boards! You look above you. No decadent frescoed ceilings of sensual bodies writhing in blasphemous ecstasy, just more humble, wooden boards! What’s that you hear? It’s certainly not that laughter of Satan known as music! Nor is it the incomprehensible Latin drone of some agent of Westminster. Nay! It is the incomprehensible English drone of a humble, wooden-board-loving Puritan minister!

How is this possible, you say? What if I told you there was a place you could worship like this every day of the week without any fear of the Church of England seizing your land, throwing you in prison, or levying a special tax against your separatist congregation? Sound too good to be true? Aye, were gambling not a damnable sin, I would wager that you are now thinking to yourself, “Brother Bradford! Thou must repent of the lies thou hast uttered!” But this be no lie! I seek a few motivated Puritans to join me in a business opportunity to create a community of wooden-board-loving, religious-freedom-seeking pilgrims in The New World!

That’s right; tonight, I’m here to tell you about the exciting, life-changing career you could have as a Pilgrim! Being a Pilgrim is about taking your part-time job of rebelling from the Church of England and making it your full-time life to become the most Puritan you you can be. Have I got you excited now? No? Good. We all know what a sin excitement it.

So how do you begin your Pilgrim’s progress? It’s easy. Let me tell you about the Puritan utopia we are going to create together called Plymouth. In Plymouth, we will have no King, no Church of England, no taxes, no infrastructure, no food, no protection, no understanding of the local environment, and best of all, no Scotsmen! Just acres and acres of forest waiting to become — yes! — wooden boards!

Now, listen closely. We’re going to get a ship, OK? It’s called The Mayflower. Just wait until you see how many wooden boards this baby is made of. And all you need to do is tell three of your Puritan friends about this new opportunity. And then they tell three of their Puritan friends and they tell their Puritan friends, and pretty soon we’ve got a thriving community in Plymouth!

Look at my hat; see how it’s small at the top and wide at the bottom? I want everyone to visualize himself at the top of the hat. To do that, you gotta get more people under your hat, you see what I’m saying? The more people under your hat, the more equal we all are, and the more religious freedom we have for people who believe what we believe!

Now most people will get to join at the bottom of the hat, the brim. Tonight, I’m offering you blessed go-getters the opportunity to skip the brim and automatically qualify at the hat buckle level. All you have to do is buy passage aboard the Mayflower and get three more Puritans to sign up as Pilgrims and also buy passage. That’s it!

Tarry a moment. I don’t want you getting ideas that this is going to change your life overnight. This opportunity is for self-starters. Seriously, in Plymouth you will need to self-start building a cabin, self-start growing crops, self-start a church, and self-start a family. It’s not for everyone. But ask yourself — where do you see yourself in five hundred years? Dead and forgotten? Or dead and having school children from the future making construction paper replicas of the hats you wore? So tell me: Are you Pur-I-CAN’Ts? Or are you Pur-I-CANs?

As a Pilgrim, you can work as much or five times as much as you like; it’s up to you. Just remember the three P’s: Puritans, Pilgrims, and Plymouth. You recruit Puritans, sign them up to be Pilgrims, then you go live the life you’ve dreamed of in Plymouth! Also, remember the Pilgrim hat model! Just as the Pilgrim’s hat must be filled with the Pilgrim’s head, so the Pilgrim hat model must be filled with lots and lots of Pilgrims! The more Pilgrims we get at the brim level, the faster you’ll move up from hat buckle, to top of the hat! Also, be thinking about the four H’s. I don’t know what they are yet, but I’m working on a new program and I’d like it to be about H’s. Let me know if you have any ideas.

In the New World, everyone has the opportunity to get to the top. Equality is a possibility for all men who share our religion, language, customs, manner of dress, and skin tone! I want you to get pumped, ‘cause this whole Pilgrim thing is going to go viral, just like the actual smallpox virus we are bringing with us. I look forward to seeing you all at our next big event in Plymouth where we will give thanks for all the amazing things that have happened and because we’ll certainly have had a huge harvest. See you all on The Mayflower!