{"id":956,"date":"2007-11-24T03:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-24T03:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=956"},"modified":"2007-11-24T03:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-24T03:10:00","slug":"varieties-of-thanksgiving-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=956","title":{"rendered":"Varieties of Thanksgiving Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Florida teacher wants to challenge the usual First Thanksgiving story<\/a> with one about the Spanish in St. Augustine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But [Robyn] Gioia, 53, has written a children’s book, and just the title is enough to peeve any Pilgrim: America’s REAL First Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

“It was the publisher who put real in capital letters,” she says, “but I think it’s great.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Couple of problems with that. While the Pilgrims occupy much more mythic space than their numbers justify (do you ever hear about the parallel Anglican colonies and their celebrations?,<\/a>), the Spanish soldiers and missionaries in Florida occupy none<\/a>, outside of Florida, where I suppose that they inspire the names of subdivisions. They came, they massacred some French Protestants<\/a>, and eventually they gave up the territory.<\/p>\n

We read about Ms. Gioia’s efforts on the train coming home. On T’giving morning, M. called me to breakfast. <\/p>\n

“Is it a Calvinist<\/a> breakfast or a Papist<\/a> breakfast?”<\/p>\n

“Oatmeal and burned biscuits — what do you think?” she replied.<\/p>\n

“Only the Elect<\/a> will be saved,” I said.<\/p>\n

And then we had bean soup at supper. As for the people who think that Thanksgiving should be a “day of atonement” or “day of mourning,” let them eat cold tofu in the dark. I see too many people trying to make it back to the family home on this one day–a day that is more about social bonds than about history or religion. I, for one, cannot condemn them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Florida teacher wants to challenge the usual First Thanksgiving story with one about the Spanish in St. Augustine. But [Robyn] Gioia, 53, has written a children’s book, and just the title is enough to peeve any Pilgrim: America’s REAL First Thanksgiving. “It was the publisher who put real in capital letters,” she says, “but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-fq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1258,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1258","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":0},"title":"It’s Thanksgiving-Put Your Mask On","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a long-standing interest in masks and masked ritual, going back to when I helped Evan John Jones with Sacred Mask Sacred Dance.So consider than on the East Coast a century ago, Thanksgiving (or at least the last Thursday in November), rather than Halloween, was the time for masking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1567183735","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1089,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1089","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":1},"title":"Ce potiron extraordinaire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This pumpkin was grown at Country Roots Farm. Now M. has sliced and gutted it, and it is transformed into pie.Happy Thanksgiving, the \"most civilized holiday of them all.\"","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12608,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12608","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":2},"title":"Our Thanksgiving Prayer","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I have this little tradition where every Thanksgiving we read aloud (people who eat with us have to participate) Gary Snyder's poem \"Prayer for the Great Family.\"((He says it was inspired by a Mohawk prayer, but you can feel his Pagan-ish form of Zen Buddhism in it too.))\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Buddhism\"","block_context":{"text":"Buddhism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=buddhism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/gary-snyer-quote.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/gary-snyer-quote.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/gary-snyer-quote.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1264,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1264","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":3},"title":"Pagan Thoughts at the Parade of Lights","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last fall I looked for Pagan virtues in a small-town \"Pioneer Day\" parade.Similar thoughts ran through my mind last night watching an even smaller town's \"Parade of Lights.\"The procession was about one block long: two pieces of fire apparatus, the local mountain search-and-rescue group (yellow jackets, hard hats, head lamps),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6133,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6133","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":4},"title":"Animism, Religion, Bloggers, and the AAR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is followed by what I think of as Hell Weekend. At least it is that if you chair or co-chair one of the many program units. Me, I am co-chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group, but I suspect that all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12523,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12523","url_meta":{"origin":956,"position":5},"title":"A Libation for the Mother River","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote earlier about the hitchhiker whom I called Travis, a post writen on the 19th of October, mostly at the Twenty Below coffeehouse in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to drive an old friend home to his tiny prairie town after he had been poked and prodded and MRI'd all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/missouri-at-fort-pierre-300x188.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}