Enjoy your bean soup!

“The first Thanksgiving was held in Massachusetts between Native Americans and protestant English settlers who ate a great feast of turkey and cranberries.”

That’s the nugget of wisdom pervasive in our popular culture and taught to schoolchildren. If you’ve heard enough times then it must be the truth, right?

Well, not exactly:

Robyn Gioia, 53, has written a children's book, and just the title is enough to peeve any Pilgrim: America's REAL First Thanksgiving…

What does REAL mean? Well, she's not talking turkey and cranberry sauce. She's talking a Spanish explorer who landed here on Sept. 8, 1565, and celebrated a feast of thanksgiving with Timucua Indians. They dined on bean soup.

If you do the math, it is 56 years before the Pilgrims sat down and shared a meal with natives at Plymouth Rock.

Giola goes on to mention in the USA TODAY article that she hoped that the influx of Latinos into the U.S. would help spread the idea of the first Thanksgiving took place 442 years ago in St. Augustine, Florida.

(For that matter, the meal at Plymouth Rock was probably the third Thanksgiving according to some researchers).

While some of us enjoy time with family and a nice meal, let us show our gratitude to the important things in life as well as the history behind true first Thanksgiving nearly five centuries ago.

Sources- USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor

Image- Seriously Good