At 15:29 25/11/00 -0500, Wirt Atmar wrote:

>In that regard, the current Texas governor, George Dubya, when he was last
>here in El Paso, promised to file suit in Federal Court to have the Florida
>officials stop recounting their obviously fraudulent Thanksgiving story.

To find out about the "real" first Thanksgiving (and other "events" in
American history) I strongly recommend a book by James Loewen called "Lies
my Teacher Told Me" - see http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/

There is a transcript of a broadcast interview with James Loewen at
http://www.booknotes.org/transcripts/50039.htm which makes interesting
reading and contains various information that is expanded upon in his
book.  Here is one paragraph from that (long) interview:

"The first point to know about Thanksgiving is that it was actually invented by
  Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War, and the first
Thanksgiving that is
  in our modern series happened in 1863, and it was basically giving thanks
for the
  slow victory of the troops, particularly that previous summer in
Vicksburg and at
  Gettysburg and the fact that the Union was going to be held together and that
  slavery was going to be ended."

In his book he goes on to say that the "Pilgrims" were not linked to
Thanksgiving until some time in the 1890's.

This is not to say that the first Thanksgiving didn't occur.  I'm sure it
did, as a celebration of the harvest has a long tradition in many
cultures.  The "Harvest Festival" is still a high point of the church
calendar in the Britain.

John D. Alleyn-Day  [log in to unmask]
Alleyn-Day International Ltd.
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