Austin, TX

The holidays are upon us and I’ve realized that I have done no shopping so far. I have a few gift ideas but I really need to “get on it” as we say in England. This time of year brings out my desire to bake. I made an incredible apple pie a couple of weeks ago using my chai spices. Yes, I know, I’m chai crazy! I can’t help it, I love the taste and smell of chai spices. They go exceptionally well with apples. The weather has been downright balmy. I keep opening the windows because it’s just so nice outside.

I’m going to Dallas tomorrow because my niece is in town staying with my parents and I want to see her and her baby. When I get back I need to start getting the house ready for the Thanksgiving Invasion of 2007. I’m going to have a very full house. I think I counted 18 for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Luckily my brother lives behind me and between us we have two kitchens to cook in and quite a few guest rooms.

A few years ago we got tired of turkey and since then we’ve been less traditional about Thanksgiving dinner. One year we did a seven course Thai meal and another year we did tapas. Both were incredible meals and this year we’ve decided to repeat the tapas only with smaller portions because last time we were all so full that it would have taken a cattle prod to get us moving again.

Since my youngest brother and his family moved to the area we’ve had a bit of resistance to our non-traditional meals. The boy wants turkey. So, we’ll probably do the full Thanksgiving turkey meal the night before. That way we can have turkey sandwiches for lunch on Thanksgiving and our non-traditional tapas meal in the evening.

I always find myself conflicted about the whole Thanksgiving holiday. I hate all the lies we’ve been brainwashed with since childhood about how the happy little pilgrims and the happy little Indians shared their meal of thanksgiving. While I think it’s wonderful to celebrate Thanksgiving and to be thankful for your blessings, it’s not good to distort history and perpetuate the lies by falsely portraying the origins of this holiday. On an amusing note, the woman I work with at our local library where I volunteer, did not know that pilgrims were not the same as native Americans. She can be excused though, she’s from Guatemala. I did have to tell her that we could NOT replace the teepee craft with a pilgrim craft for Native American week.

Did you know that San Elizario, a community near El Paso, claims that the first Thanksgiving took place there in 1598? That was 23 years before the Pilgrims’ feast. They now re-enact the event which is said to have been a celebration of the arrival of Spanish explorer Juan de Onate on the banks of the Rio Grande. De Onate is said to have held a big Thanksgiving festival after leading hundreds of settlers on a grueling 350-mile long trek across the Mexican desert.

San Elizario isn’t the first Texas city to lay claim to the first Thanksgiving. No, The Texas Society of Daughters of the American Colonists have declared that the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in May 1541 celebrated the first feast of Thanksgiving in Palo Duro Canyon.

Past all the myths, Thanksgiving is for me, a time to spend with my family and a time to be thankful for all my blessings.

Thanksgiving, myth, lies, pilgrims, native americans