The First Thanksgiving Was Catholic
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
I have been asked to comment on Thanksgiving, the national holiday commemorating the first successful harvest season of the grim Protestant pilgrims of New England.
“It just doesn’t seem right to celebrate the prospering of a Puritan sect that established a Calvinist theocracy in the Massachusetts Colony that would mercilessly persecute Catholics,” one reader argued.
Such Catholics, gathered around their
laden Thanksgiving tables enjoying the company of family and friends, should
know a quite consoling fact of American History: the first Thanksgiving on U.S.
soil was Catholic.
The epic journey of the first European colonists to the Southwest. The American History books we studied as youth pretend that Colonial American History is exclusively what happened in the 13 New England colonies. This ignores an enormous part of reality - our Catholic History. Little attention is paid to the epic northward advance by Spanish pioneers into the southern tier of States reaching from Florida across Texas and New Mexico to California, today called the Spanish Borderlands.
On January 26, 1598, a Spanish expedition set out from Mexico with the aim of
founding a new kingdom. Three months later, after a long, dangerous trek forging
a new trail northward, the now famous El Camino Real [The Royal Road], it crossed the Rio Grande and set up camp south of present day El Paso, Texas. On April 30, a Mass of thanksgiving was said, and the valiant leader of the expedition. Don Juan de Oñate, took formal possession of the new land, called New Mexico, in the name of the Heavenly Lord, God Almighty, and the earthly lord King Philip II.
Then, after the Mass, the Franciscan priests blessed the food on tables abundant with fish, ducks and geese, and the 600-strong expedition of soldiers and colonists feasted. The celebration ended with a play enacting scenes of the native Indians hearing the first words of the Catholic Faith and receiving the Sacrament of Baptism. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
Another great article on the first Catholic Thanksgiving can be found here.
So how do Catholics celebrate Thanksgiving? This article on celebrating the Catholic litugical year has some great ideas.
Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
I have been asked to comment on Thanksgiving, the national holiday commemorating the first successful harvest season of the grim Protestant pilgrims of New England.
“It just doesn’t seem right to celebrate the prospering of a Puritan sect that established a Calvinist theocracy in the Massachusetts Colony that would mercilessly persecute Catholics,” one reader argued.
Such Catholics, gathered around their
laden Thanksgiving tables enjoying the company of family and friends, should
know a quite consoling fact of American History: the first Thanksgiving on U.S.
soil was Catholic.
The epic journey of the first European colonists to the Southwest. The American History books we studied as youth pretend that Colonial American History is exclusively what happened in the 13 New England colonies. This ignores an enormous part of reality - our Catholic History. Little attention is paid to the epic northward advance by Spanish pioneers into the southern tier of States reaching from Florida across Texas and New Mexico to California, today called the Spanish Borderlands.
On January 26, 1598, a Spanish expedition set out from Mexico with the aim of
founding a new kingdom. Three months later, after a long, dangerous trek forging
a new trail northward, the now famous El Camino Real [The Royal Road], it crossed the Rio Grande and set up camp south of present day El Paso, Texas. On April 30, a Mass of thanksgiving was said, and the valiant leader of the expedition. Don Juan de Oñate, took formal possession of the new land, called New Mexico, in the name of the Heavenly Lord, God Almighty, and the earthly lord King Philip II.
Then, after the Mass, the Franciscan priests blessed the food on tables abundant with fish, ducks and geese, and the 600-strong expedition of soldiers and colonists feasted. The celebration ended with a play enacting scenes of the native Indians hearing the first words of the Catholic Faith and receiving the Sacrament of Baptism. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
Another great article on the first Catholic Thanksgiving can be found here.
So how do Catholics celebrate Thanksgiving? This article on celebrating the Catholic litugical year has some great ideas.
