It is that time again this year – time to loosen our belts in anticipation for all the good food we will be eating on Thursday. Thanksgiving is a time for family get-togethers, football, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and of course turkey. I will admit, if I had to pick my last meal – other than the Eucharist – I would pick a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.

I ran across an old article by Dr. Taylor Marshall, “The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving,” and I thought I would share some of the more interesting facts. 

First, we were all taught that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in November, 1621 when the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA held a banquet to thank the local Native Americans for helping them get the hang of life in the New World. Nice story, but that was not the first Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving, celebrated in the New World was nearly 50 years earlier. On September 8 (the feast of the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary), 1565 the Spanish settlers and the Native Americans in St. Augustine, FL celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving followed by a feast. A second, similar “Thanksgiving” was celebrated on April 30, 1598 in Texas when Fr. Juan de Onate declared a day of Thanksgiving be commemorated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

But let’s get back to the Thanksgiving we all know and love – November, 1621. First, who were the Pilgrims? In the early 1600s, Richard Clyfton, a parson in the Church of England expressed his sympathies for a group called the Separatists. The Separatists thought that the Church of England was still too much like the Catholic Church. Parson Clyfton agreed with this group of Calvinistic non-conformists, and for his support of them, Richard Clyfton was excommunicated from the Church of England. He moved to Amsterdam, and a group of his disciples followed him there. They became known as Pilgrims. After moving around Europe for a few years, as we know, the Pilgrims came to America in 1620 on the ship, Mayflower.

The Pilgrims were very anti-Catholic, which is rather ironic, given the other main character in the Thanksgiving story, the Native American, Squanto. As we remember, Squanto was the Native American who mediated between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. What we were probably never told was that Squanto was a Catholic. Years earlier, before the Pilgrims came to Plymouth, Squanto was enslaved by the English settlers already in Massachusetts, but was later freed by a group of Spanish Franciscans. Through them, Squanto heard the Good News of Jesus Christ and asked to be baptized. So he was a Catholic

So the traditional Thanksgiving story is because a Native American man, Squanto, who was also a Catholic, mediated between his tribe and the Pilgrims, a group of strongly anti-Catholic Calvinists, who fled England because of the very same laws that persecuted them, also were used to persecute Catholics in England leading to the martyrdom of people like St. Thomas More and St. John Fischer.

Maybe it is best if everyone remembers that the word “Thanksgiving” comes from the Greek word, “Eucharistia.” Thus, the Body and Blood of Christ, given to us at every Mass, is the true “Thanksgiving Meal.”