Thanksgiving can be a busy time for mild and amusing varieties of myth-busting.
Thereâ??s the notion, for example, that eating roast turkey makes you want to doze off after the feast. Not entirely accurate, says Bon Appetit magazine. â??The real reason youâ??re sleepy? Itâ??s likely the stress of the holiday, the hours spent cooking, the wine and spiritsâ??and all the fat and calories you just consumed,â? the magazine says.
Then thereâ??s disputed history about the holiday: Pilgrims may not have been the hosts of North Americaâ??s first Thanksgiving. The editor of History News Network, Rick Shenkman?, has pointed out: â??Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1598 â?? twenty-three years before the Pilgrimsâ?? festivalâ? in 1621.
Thereâ??s also the matter of what the Pilgrims served at the feast in 1621. â??No one knows if they had turkey, although they were used to eating turkey,â? Shenkman says. â??The only food we know they had for sure was deer.â?
Thereâ??s the question, too, of Pilgrim garb. They didnâ??t dress in black, Shenkman writes, and â??they did not wear those funny buckles, weird shoes, or black steeple hats.â?
The myths of Thanksgiving, while undeniably engaging, tend to be on the innocuous side, rather of the genre of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
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