Americans are gearing up for their annual festival of excess. In the course of a binge that begins next Thursday on Thanksgiving Day and continues until the new year, 70 million Americans will gain weight and liquor sales will soar by eight million gallons. Retail sales will leap 25 per cent. An extra one million tons of trash will be generated each week during the holidays.

Yet the original Thanksgiving feast, celebrated by the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1621, was a simple celebration of having enough food to stay alive. The event was organised after a bitter winter during which half of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, died of disease and exposure. It was about clinging stubbornly to life on the edge of a wilderness.

Plymouth, less than an hour's drive from Boston, still calls itself America's hometown. Even today, one in 10 residents claims to be descended from Mayflower Pilgrims.

Moored in Plymouth harbour is a replica of the oak-timbered Mayflower ship that carried the pilgrims across the Atlantic. The pilgrims were a small group of English religious dissidents who gathered together to establish their own church, separate from the Church of England. At the time church and state were one, so such actions were considered treason.

Forced to leave, the separatists got financial backing from some London adventurers to set up a colony in America. They set out from Southampton in September 1620 on two vessels, Speedwell and Mayflower. Speedwell soon sprung a leak and was forced to turn back. Mayflower persevered, often battered by gales.

An exhausted group of pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in December. They are believed to have used Plymouth Rock as a stepping stone to reach the shore. This small boulder is now housed in a gaudy Greek portico constructed by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.

It is difficult to imagine the awful suffering of the European settlers during their first terrible winter. At times only six or seven of the group were healthy, and spent all their time tending to the dozens who were ill.

Of the 102 pilgrims who landed, only 50 remained after the winter.

The survivors buried their dead at night, so the native Indians would not see their dwindling numbers.

Yet initial contact with the Indians proved friendly. A few months after the Pilgrims arrived, an Indian walked into the settlement and greeted them in English with the word "Welcome". His home was in Maine and he had learnt some English from the captains of passing fishing boats.

The pilgrims were fortunate enough to meet the only English-speaking Indian on the coast. Perhaps God was on their side after all.

Against the backdrop of the Atlantic is Plimouth Plantation, a reconstructed 17th century pilgrim village a few miles outside Plymouth town centre. At the entrance to the park is the caution: You are now entering 1627. But don't expect stiff collars and funny pointed hats.

Pilgrim guides dressed in authentic clothes and speaking old English dialect bring new meaning to the term method acting.

Plantation staff never break out of character as they go about everyday chores such as stirring rabbit stew or hoeing the vegetable garden. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of their neighbours. But these walking, talking historians can also hold forth on the subject of 17th century politics and religion.

The first Thanksgiving was, in fact, a harvest feast held in 1621. In a letter home, one colonist wrote: "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered in the fruit of our labors."

For three days the pilgrims feasted on wild turkey, venison and pumpkin. Cranberries may have been used in the "puddings in the belly", known today as stuffing. The four surviving housewives in the settlement oversaw all the preparations. Around 90 local Indians joined in the feast, with their chief as an honoured guest.

In subsequent years the Indian population of the East Coast would be hunted down and massacred by European settlers. Others fell victim to imported diseases and their lands were seized.

The settlers left a bloody trail in their attempt to subdue the wilderness and turn it into a New England.

On Thursday, a group of activists for Native American rights will demonstrate in Plymouth, as they do every Thanksgiving Day. Last year the demonstration turned ugly, leading to charges of police brutality which have since been dropped.

A group of protesters called The United American Indians of New England want Thanksgiving to be observed as a national day of mourning. They offer a sober, revisionist view of the feast, in the midst of conspicuous consumption.