As you sit down to your Thanksgiving table with your loony uncle Bob, who actually voted for Trump, you should know a few things about the holiday. First of all, you know nothing about the holiday. Everything you have ever heard about Thanksgiving, from the Pilgrims ate turkey to the first celebration was at Plymouth, Massachusetts, is a myth, much like Trump.
First of all, tell Uncle Bob that the first Thanksgiving was held in … (drum roll) … San Elizario, Texas. That’s right. This was years before Trump proposed a Mexican wall, when Texas was actually part of Mexico. When Spanish explorer Juan de Onate led hundreds of settlers on a 350-mile trip across the Mexican desert in 1598, he held a huge Thanksgiving dinner. The historic event is recreated every year, by Texans and Mexicans who giggle at the Plymouth copycats.
According to the History News Network, Plymouth was not even in second place. No, Uncle Bob, it was the Berkeley Plantation on the St. James River in Virginia where the second Thanksgiving dinner was held on Dec. 4, 1619, two years before the Plymouth pretenders.
You can forget the Mayflower and all its society-type passengers. You should be commemorating the Margaret which brought 38 seasick passengers to Virginia in 1619. The settlers were ordered by the London investment company to celebrate the ship’s arrival. So they did. Don’t laugh. My Boy JFK formally recognized the Virginia claim in 1963.
You know nothing. Every painting of the first Thanksgiving included the almighty turkey as the centerpiece. Wrong. It was more likely deer. For your records, historians say there was no corn on the cob, potatoes, cranberries, apples or pears. No potatoes?
If you find Uncle Bob’s table manners to be deplorable, remember that there were no knives or forks at Plymouth. Everyone ate with their hands. Think about that. Good thing they had no mashed potatoes with gravy.
Thanksgiving was a big deal in Massachusetts, but it was not declared a national holiday until 1863 when Abe Lincoln decided it was time for everyone to eat too much in celebration. He was so enthusiastic that he decided on two days of thanksgiving, one in August and one in November. Gradually, people forgot about the August celebration. It’s too hot for cooking a turkey for three hours in the summertime.
Actually, the whole Plymouth tradition is a phony tale cooked up by the Harting family, friends of mine who live in Plymouth, to inflate their property values.
The Pilgrims did not step off onto Plymouth Rock. That story was first told by 95-year-old Plymouth resident Thomas Faunce, more than a century after the alleged event. Actually the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown, not Plymouth.
The Pilgrims spent the harsh winters huddled in their log cabins, right? No, they did not. Log cabins were not erected in America until the late 17th Century, when they were introduced by German and Swedish immigrants. How about those immigrants, Uncle Bob? Plymouth homes were actually wooden clapboard houses made from sawn lumber.
The myth is that the Pilgrims were a highly religious crowd which limited their sexual activity, even in those cold winter months. Wrong again, Uncle Bob. Actually they consider sexual activity as a God-given responsibility. When one First Church of Boston (figures) member refused to have relations with his wife, he was expelled. Minister Cotton Mather condemned a married couple who had abstained from sex “to achieve a higher spirituality.” Historians also state that the Pilgrims enjoyed jokes and laughter, especially regarding that chaste married couple.
Well, now that you have been told the truth about the Thanksgiving holiday, you can celebrate the truth of its origins. You can even pass the squash to Uncle Bob, the Trump supporter. No one is perfect.
Uncle Bob is not even close.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.