Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving Day...

...was really brought to America by the Catholics, more than half a century before those Protestant upstarts in Massachusetts.

Robyn Gioia is a fifth-grade teacher from St Augustine, Florida. She has recently published a book, America's REAL First Thanksgiving. An article in USA Today elaborates...

What does REAL mean? Well, she's not talking turkey and cranberry sauce. She's talking a Spanish explorer who landed here on Sept. 8, 1565, and celebrated a feast of thanksgiving with Timucua Indians. They dined on bean soup...

Of course, she didn't discover this on her own. The article is worth reading, and worthy of reflection for those who underestimate the Catholic heritage in what is now the USA. It might be one more by-product of a growing Latino population, that on the birthday of Our Lady, we have all the more reason to give thanks -- over a bowl of bean soup, perhaps.
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