A Thanksgiving tradition of over five decades will play out again at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines. Senior Pastor David Ruhe says men and boys will sit on the right of the church and girls and women will sit on the left as they re-enact a service from the 1600’s. He says they try to be as historically accurate as they can be, although they do use modern amenities like heat and a pipe organ. Ruhe says it’s more traditional than historical. Ruhe says it is a way to connect with the past. He says it helps them to enact and connect with the traditions of the Pilgrims, which he calls “quite remarkable people.” He says most of us didn’t learn that much about who they were or what they were about. Ruhe says the Pilgrims were the “spiritual forbearers” of the church as the present day United Church of Christ descended from the puritans in New England. Ruhe says those forbearers first went to Holland seeking religious freedom. He says they experienced religious license in an anything goes environment. Ruhe says they took their religion very seriously and for us today it’s kind of a take it or leave it consumer commodity. Ruhe says those who attend will hear what it was like to attend church in those times. He says the sermon will be delivered in Pilgrim parlance with extensive quotations from a writing called “Mort’s Relation” which was a journal from the Pilgrims in the new world. The service begins at 10 a-m and Ruhe says you’re advised to get there early as they always have a full house for this day.