|
MYTH: The first
Thanksgiving was in 1621 and the pilgrims celebrated it every year
thereafter.
FACT: The first feast wasn't repeated, so it wasn't the
beginning of a tradition. In fact, the colonists didn't even call
the day Thanksgiving. To them, a thanksgiving was a religious
holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a
specific event, such as the winning of a battle. On such a religious
day, the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and
Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest
feast--dancing, singing secular songs, playing games--wouldn't have
been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would
have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims minds.
MYTH: The original Thanksgiving feast took place on the fourth
Thursday of November.
FACT: The original feast in 1621 occurred sometime between September
21 and November 11. Unlike our modern holiday, it was three days
long. The event was based on English harvest festivals, which
traditionally occurred around the 29th of September. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth
Thursday of November in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941). Abraham
Lincoln had previously designated it as the last Thursday in
November, which may have correlated it with the November 21, 1621,
anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod.
MYTH: The pilgrims wore only black and white clothing. They had
buckles on their hats, garments, and shoes.
FACT: Buckles did not come into fashion until later in the
seventeenth century and black and white were commonly worn only on
Sunday and formal occasions. Women typically dressed in red, earthy
green, brown, blue, violet, and gray, while men wore clothing in
white, beige, black, earthy green, and brown.
MYTH: The pilgrims brought furniture with them on the Mayflower.
FACT: The only furniture that the pilgrims brought on the Mayflower
was chests and boxes. They constructed wooden furniture once they
settled in Plymouth.
MYTH: The Mayflower was headed for Virginia, but due to a
navigational mistake it ended up in Cape Cod Massachusetts.
FACT: The Pilgrims were in fact planning to settle in Virginia, but
not the modern-day state of Virginia. They were part of the Virginia
Company, which had the rights to most of the eastern seaboard of the
U.S. The pilgrims had intended to go to the Hudson River region in
New York State, which would have been considered "Northern
Virginia," but they landed in Cape Cod instead. Treacherous seas
prevented them from venturing further south. |
