6 Interesting Catholic Thanksgiving Facts You Need to Know

taylormarshall.com ^ | November 25, 2013 | Dr Taylor Marshall

[NYer]

When you’re sitting down for that wonderful feast on Thursday, here are 6 interesting Catholic Thanksgiving Facts you can share with your family. Print them out and read them aloud over some pumpkin (or pecan) pie!

The history books will tell you that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Protestant pilgrims of Massachusetts in 1621. Not so. There was the Catholic Thanksgiving of 1565 in Florida and another Catholic Thanksgiving of 1589 in Texas.

1. The first American Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on September 8 (feast of the birth of the Blessed Virgin) in 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. The Native Americans and Spanish settlers held a feast and the Holy Mass was offered. This was 56 years before the Puritan pilgrims of Massachusetts.Don Pedro Menendez came ashore amid the sounding of trumpets, artillery salutes and the firing of cannons to claim the land for King Philip II and Spain. The ship chaplain Fr. Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales chanted the Te Deum and presented a crucifix that Menendez ceremoniously kissed. Then the 500 soldiers, 200 sailors and 100 families and artisans, along with the Timucuan Indians celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in gratitude to God.
2. The second American Thanksgiving happened on April 30, 1598, when Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate requested the friars to say a Mass of Thanksgiving, after which he formally proclaimed “La Toma”, claiming the land north of the Rio Grande for the King of Spain. The men feasted on duck, goose, and fish from the river. The actors among them dressed and presented a play. All this took place twenty-three years before the Pilgrims set sail from England on the Mayflower.
3. The Puritan pilgrims were violently anti-Catholic. They left England because they thought that the Church of England was too Catholic. These Puritans were strict Calvinists. The pilgrims also opposed celebrating Christmas, dancing, musical instruments in church, and even hymns as papistical.
   
4. Squanto, the beloved hero of Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock, was Catholic! (Here’s my full article on the Catholicism of Squanto.) Squanto had been enslaved by the English but he was freed by Spanish Franciscans. Squanto thus received baptism and became a Catholic. So it was a baptized Catholic Native American who orchestrated what became known as Thanksgiving.
   

   Catholic Squanto teaches the lame English Puritans how to play limbo.
   “How low can you go?!”

• So while Thanksgiving may celebrate the Calvinist Separatists who fled England, Catholics might remember the same unjust laws that granted the crown of martyrdom to Thomas More, John Fisher, Edmund Campion, et al. are the same injustices that led the Pilgrims to Plymouth.
• And let everyone remember that “Thanksgiving” in Greek is Eucharistia. Thus, the Body and Blood of Christ is the true “Thanksgiving Meal”.

  And don’t forget to raise your wine glass and recite the wonderful limerick of Hilaire Belloc:

  “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
  There’s always laughter and good red wine.
  At least I’ve always found it so.
  Benedicamus Domino!”

  ― Hilaire Belloc

[NYer]

Happy Thanksgiving, ping!

[narses]

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[rickomatic]

Actually, couldn’t the last supper be considered the first Thanksgiving?

[Slyfox]

For those who do not know Taylor Marshall was once an Episcopalian priest and is now Catholic. He taught two of my sons high school theology. Good guy.

[Jeff Chandler]

Ruh roh (LOL!)

[MeganC]

You forgot the sixth interesting Catholic fact about Thanksgiving:

Catholics never seem to miss an opportunity to take a poke at Protestants. And while Protestants across the USA are celebrating Thanksgiving this week there’s Catholics who stand ready to pee in their punch.

Seriously, if you’re trying to endear people to Catholicism you’re failing at it. Miserably.

[ifinnegan]

What is the point of this thread?

It spews leftist drivel and hate mongers well.

[HiTech RedNeck]

How about not tying it to any denomination, but to God?

Now THERE’s an idea!!

(And yeah, those Puritans were kind of sad.)

[pleasenotcalifornia]

Best Wishes and Happy Thanskgiving!

[BipolarBob]

Why stop at 6 things when 7 make it much more interesting? Like the massacre of 111 French Hugenots by their Catholic brothers on the first Protestant Thanksgiving on American soil. I mean why leave that out?
http://www.twoagespilgrims.com/doctrine/?p=1060

[HiTech RedNeck]

It just would not be Thanksgiving without a turkey. Thanks for being one.

[Jedidah]

AMEN!

Trying to turn gratitude toward the Maker into a tug-of-war among men is abominable.

[cll]

I’m Roman Catholic of recent Spanish ancestors and this is the first I hear of these so-called Spanish Thanksgiving celebrations. In fact, in Puerto Rico, after 400 years of Spanish/Catholic Church rule, the first we heard about Thanksgiving was after the island was ceded to the United States after the war of 1898.

I like Dr. Taylor, but this history revision really treads on the original Thanksgiving tradition.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ah, just the usual sectarian “my church is better than your church” games.

Don’t you think that makes them all look like turkeys to Christ?

I think Baptists do it the best but that’s just MHO. (Duck’n & runn’n)

[BipolarBob]

Thanks for calling me one and giving the original poster a free pass. No bias there, huh?

[angry elephant]

So this flies against what we have been taught about the Pilgrims’ socialist experiment, doesn’t it? I.e., that they were starving when it was from each according to his ability and to each according to his need?

And then they changed that so that each man or family reaped the bounty of their own labors, creating a bounty which they celebrated with the Indians for the first Thanksgiving?

Or should we just take it that that was the reason the Pilgrims had Thanksgiving, just that it was not the FIRST Thanksgiving?

I hate to let go of the teaching that it was the throwing off of the socialist shackles that caused this Thanksgiving in the new world.

[MeganC]

Thanks for representing the Catholics who get it right.

(-:

(FYI, we employ several Polish Catholic hands on the ranch and they are amazing in how they live their faith!)

[GeronL]

bump

They will soon claim all pilgrims were Catholic or all Lutherans or all Presbyterians and whatnot at this rate.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Doubtless there were a number of such celebrations. The original Christopher Columbus logs were lost and a purported rewriting was created, so who but God and the people who were there, now gone on to their reward, know?

The “official” one began as Protestant, but it’s an idea that is universal and very godly. Maybe if we all would be small-p protestant in the sense of protesting the supremacy of God, we would all do better.