Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving

Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving
By Rick Shenkman
Mr. Shenkman is the editor of HNN.

MYTH # 1

The Pilgrims Held the First Thanksgiving

To see what the first Thanksgiving was like you have to go to: Texas. Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1598 -- twenty-three years before the Pilgrims' festival. For several years they have staged a reenactment of the event that culminated in the Thanksgiving celebration: the arrival of Spanish explorer Juan de Onate on the banks of the Rio Grande. De Onate is said to have held a big Thanksgiving festival after leading hundreds of settlers on a grueling 350-mile long trek across the Mexican desert.

Then again, you may want to go to Virginia.. At the Berkeley Plantation on the James River they claim the first Thanksgiving in America was held there on December 4th, 1619....two years before the Pilgrims' festival....and every year since 1958 they have reenacted the event. In their view it's not the Mayflower we should remember, it's the Margaret, the little ship which brought 38 English settlers to the plantation in 1619. The story is that the settlers had been ordered by the London company that sponsored them to commemorate the ship's arrival with an annual day of Thanksgiving. Hardly anybody outside Virginia has ever heard of this Thanksgiving, but in 1963 President Kennedy officially recognized the plantation's claim.

MYTH # 2

Thanksgiving Was About Family

If by Thanksgiving, you have in mind the Pilgrim festival, forget about it being a family holiday. Put away your Norman Rockwell paintings. Turn off Bing Crosby. Thanksgiving was a multicultural community event. If it had been about family, the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them.

MYTH # 3

Thanksgiving Was About Religion

No it wasn't. Paraphrasing the answer provided above, if Thanksgiving had been about religion, the Pilgrims never would have invited the Indians to join them. Besides, the Pilgrims would never have tolerated festivities at a true religious event. Indeed, what we think of as Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival. Actual "Thanksgivings" were religious affairs; everybody spent the day praying. Incidentally, these Pilgrim Thanksgivings occurred at different times of the year, not just in November.

snip

http://hnn.us/articles/406.html

I have to admit when I thought Pilgrim I pictured black and buckles!

Richard Warren-he had the most offspring (all healthy, fertile daughters), and has the most descendants of any of the Mayflower passengers.

The Roosevelts also descend from him, and who knows how many others? I need to join either the DAR or the Mayflower Society, so I can look into things.

and remained largely unimpressed. I guess the quality of heroism in people who never swore and never went to the bathroom didn't breed true.

I do know what the Wampanoags have to say about it, that it's an urban legend and never happened. Early on, they pooled their food with the new folks so that nobody'd have to starve, but the new folks brought diseases and discord and the alliance didn't last long.

Also, in direct opposition to the uber consumerism
attached to the holidays,

Thanksgiving was about giving thanks for what you had.

Thanks for posting this.

:hi:

Myth: The turkey isn't done until the pop-up indicator pops up.

My Mom has believed that myth since the day the indicators were invented and her turkey has been bone dry ever since. I've given her a remote thermometer in hopes she'd use it, but she still trusts a piece of useless plastic instead (that BTW doesn't even measure internal temperature at the correct location). She overcooks by at least an hour every year and there's nothing I can do to convince her that pop-up indicators simply DON'T WORK!

solves everything

"The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving to have taken place in North America. Frobisher was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay, now known as Iqaluit."

The emphasis is mine.

I'll take Canadian Facts for 800, Alex... :hi:

What a turkey! If you had some myths, I'd like totally shatter them.

not so?

Just ask any Canadian.

- b

Its origin is America's Thanksgiving, which itself was previously just a New England holiday.




http://www.yorku.ca/mediar/releases_1996_2000/archive/100599.htm

What's that have to do with Thanksgiving?

Trust me, if you ain't gettin' it on Thanksgiving night, there's just something really unattractive about you.

Sex and Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie May Trigger Sexual Arousal in Men
From Cory Silverberg,

Your Guide to Sexuality.
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When Dr. Alan Hirsch, the founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago began his experiments to explore the role of scent in human sexual arousal several years ago, he probably never imagined that his research would find a link, of all things, between Thanksgiving and sex. And it must be said that the research is entirely preliminary, raising way more questions than it answers. But with that in mind, it’s possible that Dr. Hirsh’s research will one day provide an important piece of the Thanksgiving-Sex holiday pie; explaining why Thanksgiving is simultaneously such an arousing and anxiety provoking holiday (an explanation that generously avoids any mention of time spent with my family).

The studies in question both investigate the relationship between sexual arousal and smell by exposing research subjects to a variety of different scents, while measuring sexual arousal (via penile blood flow in men, and vaginal blood flow in women).

In one study of 31 men (who were, oddly enough, all recruited from a solicitation on “classic rock radio broadcasts”) the researchers found that while all scents had a positive impact on sexual arousal, certain smells impacted penile blood flow more than


snip

http://sexuality.about.com/od/sexualscience/a/sex_thanksgivin.htm

I guess that explains why I'm typing on the computer instead of...*ahem*...

:evilgrin:
:rofl:

Go without it long enough, and just SEE how thankful you are when you finally get some!

Sure beats the hell out of giblets! :evilgrin:

The story of the Pilgrims is amazing. After all the setbacks they had (running from the king's forces, the boat leaving without the women and children, getting shafted by merchants, not getting permission to form a colony, etc), it's amazing that they even made it to the New World. Then half of them got sick and died. This is when they broke from the "all things in common" approach and changed to everyman farm for himself because they were all just so sick and on the verge of starvation. After each family worked his own plot with his family, they had much better crop successes. THIS is why they had a banquet: because they wanted to thank God that they learned that they should not trying to farm with all things in common. That's what Bradford said the reason was. They invited the Native Americans because they appreciated them and had a good relationship with many of them (not all). This isn't the story they told me in school, but it is exactly what Governor William Bradford wrote in his journal. One of the most fascinated books I've ever read.

Better fed than red. That's good to know.

Thanksgiving or harvest celebrations have been taking place in Europe as far back as
the 5th century BC when the Ancient Greeks would fill a goats horn with fruit and grain
to give thanks for the harvest. The tradition was then introduced in North America by
the european settlers. It's a harvest festival for centuries, and in one form or another
it was and is a common tradition in all agricultural societies. Our giving thanks for a
“cornucopia” (literally “horn of plenty”) comes from the Ancient Greek harvest custom
of filling a goat’s horn with fruit and grain, going back to the 5th century BC.

http://customsholidays.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_first_thanksgiving

... until now, that is. For, you see, Thanksgiving was re-dated to November in order to make it a harvest festival. So the real first Thanksgiving dates not back to 5th century BC Greece, but to the Fertile Crescent in 80th century BCE as our neolithic ancestors first learned to cultivate and domesticate plants--ancestors of today's grains.

So now I win.

Your being an ass.

:eyes:

So I thought it was pretty funny to see the university's name on there. Anyway only about 4 of those myths are actually about Thanksgiving, most of them are about pilgrims and puritans.