Traditions are important, especially around the holidays.
For instance, every year on Christmas Eve, and this is completely true, my family goes to Mass and then comes home to gather ’round the television and watch the Christmas episode of The Hogan Family.
I also have a Thanksgiving tradition, but that’s based on pointing out how everyone else’s Thanksgiving tradition is a fraud. Every year around this time, I call down to El Paso. There, someone from the historical society picks up the phone and I say, “Hi, Alan Scaia with WBAP radio up in Dallas/Ft. Worth. Is there someone there who can do an interview on the first Thanksgiving?”
And then I pause.
“The real first Thanksgiving?”
The person on the other end of the phone knowingly answers, “Of course.”
Moments later, I’m talking to a historian about the time, back in 1598, the Catholics held a Mass of Thanksgiving on the banks of the Rio Grande a full 23 years before the pilgrims!
The Catholics! In Texas!
I can feel Protestants holding their handkerchiefs to their foreheads as they stagger across the room with the vapors.
Every year, I tell the story a little differently, but every year people react the same: people who aren’t from Texas say to me, “Oh, Texas. So narcissistic.”
Native Texans say it’s about damn time people talk more about Texas in November.
Last year, a representative from the El Paso Mission Trail Association told me a group had gone to Plymouth and held a “mock rivalry” at Plimouth Plantation.
His explanation of what a mock rivalry is didn’t help clear up the matter, so I called Plimouth Plantation. Plimouth Plantation didn’t sound like it had quite the same sense of humor about the situation.
“Yes, we’ve heard of several places that lay claim to the first Thanksgiving,” I was told.
It’s not surprising the folks in Massachusetts didn’t care for Texas’ antics. I have quite a bit of family in that part of the country and I can say quite confidently that New England embraces neither rootin’ nor tootin’. At least not on the same level as Texas.
Plimouth’s official position is that while earlier Thanksgivings may have been held, the traditional idea of “Thanksgiving” stems from the pilgrims.
I disagree: both Thanksgivings took place after a great journey fraught with peril. Both Thanksgivings brought together settlers and natives. Both Thanksgivings involved types of food that had previously been foreign to the Europeans.
The only difference appears to be the Texas first Thanksgiving was in April. And also, I suspect, bigger and more in-your-face.
