Yes, it was, the Latin Triditine Mass was celebrated and it beat out the Berkeley Plantation, Jamestown and Plymouth Rock by about 50 years. It seems it's not only the liberals who "revise" history. And let's face it, anyone who lives in Massachusetts knows that the growing season is over at the end of September and that's about the time the pilgrims celebrated, end of September or the beginning of October, not at the end of November like we do today. The date of the Canadian celebration of thanksgiving, Monday, Oct 10, 2011, is more accurate.
Thanks for posting. San Augustine AND Santa Fe had Thanksgiving before Plymouth.
This is true. And the event was recorded by the Chaplain. There was food sharing between the Spanish and the Indians. Because I live in la florida, I always mention this at the table every Thanksgiving Day.
What were they thankful for?
The Pilgrims were thankful for surviving a tough year of death and despair.
Actually it was the Vikings, some 500 years earlier, who celebrated the first Thanksgiving by playing the Chiefs.
Oysters, giant clams and garbanzo beans. I guess that’s one way to cut down on the number of family members coming over to celebrate Thanksgiving.
US history is often seen through a British lens. Non-Brits are only seen as threats/outsiders before 1776.
Sorry—not a Triditine Mass strictly speaking, as the Missal wasn’t published yet—1570—and Pius V was still about five months away from the Papacy.
“...garbanzo beans, olive oil, bread, pork and wine.”
Now, you know the natives had never eaten ANY of these things before.
I imagine their digestive systems went into shock, with predictable results.
After nearly running out of food and water while crossing the Chihuahua Desert, the Spaniards stumbled upon the Rio Grande. Here, they celebrated their good fortune by holding a Thanksgiving feast consisting of fish from the river, ducks and other game--but apparently no turkeys. Oñate and his party would go on to colonize New Mexico.
Sorry—God was thanked many times on this continent before 1621, but there’s really no doubt about it. The annual holiday of American Thanksgiving derives from the New England tradition that started in Plymouth Colony. President Washington nationalized the regional holiday in 1789.
The Catholic Church strongly supports American Thanksgiving, in spite of its Protestant origin, because she (like Christ her spouse) supports all good things, no matter who does them.
Actually the first Thanksgiving in North America was some miles away, in THE YEAR BEFORE the Spanish settled St. Augustine.
In 1564 a group of French Protestants known as Huguenots settled in Spanish-claimed territory near present-day Jacksonville. They built Fort Caroline on the St. John’s River in Florida, in present-day Jacksonville.
On June 30, 1564, they set a day of Thanksgiving and offered the first Protestant prayer in North America:
“We sang a psalm of Thanksgiving unto God, beseeching Him that it would please Him to continue His accustomed goodness towards us.”
Three small ships carrying 300 Frenchmen led by Rene de Laudonniere anchored in the river known today as the St. Johns. . . On June 30, 1564, construction of a triangular-shaped fort . . . was begun with the help of a local tribe of Timucuan Indians . . . (Fort Caroline was) home for this hardy group of Huguenots . . . their strong religious motivations inspired them.
When the king of Spain discovered this encroachment on what he considered his property, he dispatched an army under Don Pedro Menéndez to drive out the French and to establish a Spanish colony in La Florida. This was the beginning of St. Augustine.
After coming ashore and having his Thanksgiving Mass that you mentioned, Don Pedro Menéndez actually did drive out the French Protestants, murdering most of them in the process....
After taking Fort Caroline in a bloody battle, Menéndez found 111 French Protestant men away from the Fort, and forced them to surrender, which they did.
When they refused to convert to Roman Catholicism Capt. Menéndez murdered all 111 of the disarmed Protestants.
This was the first (and one of the only, that I know of) religious massacres in America—of those who did celebrate the 1st Thanksgiving.
One may want to review the whole history of something before boasting...
Thanksgiving was originated by the Calvinists to replace Christmas.
established a port and colony on the nearby St. John's River
How come they don't get credit for this? And:
The fleet's chaplain was a secular priest named Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales
What the heck is a "secular preist?"
Surely Leif Ericson ate with the locals, maybe we should celebrate that?
The point of Thanksgiving isn’t about having a mass and feast with the locals after sailing across the ocean -as this article assumes. That’s not much of a challenge.
The Thanksgiving celebration was about overcoming Old World norms and New World challenges and hardships to come to terms with living in the New World.
What the Plymouth colonists gave thanks for wasn’t a good crossing it was overcoming the errors and fmaine of their first year, reorganizing their community’s economic and political structure, working with the locals and prospering as a result. I.e., that they ‘made it’ in New World. It was a transformational experience, not a voyage, mass and a feast.
The Thanksgiving holiday can also be looked at as the triumph of capitalism over the failures of socialism -if you must have a polital interpretation.
To parochialize such an event and the ensuing holiday based upon religious and/or cultural identity-politiking is quite offensive.