. . media campaign targeting the Lincoln Administration. Since it was a "God Revival" era (they come and go), the holiday was declared to molify the Neo-Puritans.

It is based entirely on a small note in the colony's records complaining about a beer bash that got out of hand, went on for days and consumed a lot of the winter provisions. Natives smelled the food and came by and were sent out to get some more (probably in exchange for beer).

The Neo-Puritans naturally interpreted it as a religious event in so religious a community and it would have been a prayer meeting to thank God for the harvest.

Everything else about Thanksgiving was made up out of pure imagination because nobody knew anything about the Pilgrims, including their costumes (which were apparently copied from the inside lid of a Dutch Masters cigar box), the blunderbusses they hunted with (a no-aim, no-range weapon of mass destruction to repel boarders trying to take over you ship) and their turkey hunting. All completely imaginary.

Wild turkeys in a natural habitat are almost impossible to bag even with modern equipment. Their evasiveness has been described as "near to genius". The Pilgrims did bring Mexican turkeys over from Europe in 1620 so they could actually have eaten turkey, but nobody knows for sure. Mexican turkeys, introduced to Europe 100 years before, had completely displaced the peacock as festival bird and were by then just normal supplies.

All this and many more tawdry details are available from the Smithsonian Institution. Much of it was published in Smithsonian Magazine just before the Bicentenial - along with the truth about a lot of the other myths that comprise our "American Heritage". This elicited pleading letters to "Please stop - we know it must be true because you have all the evidence, but please stop anyway".

So, Marlowe, I pretty much agree with you for once, and with your Baby Jesus statement also (tax time in the Roman Empire was spring, not winter, just as it is here today, and for very practical reasons).