The Huguenot Were the First to Celebrate Thanksgiving in the New World?

Given the fact that at least 100,000 Huguenot (French Calvinists) were killed in Paris alone during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, and given the fact Queen Elizabeth encouraged Huguenot immigration to the New World (even financing much of it), it would seem that those who escaped France before the Medici terror would have much for which to be thankful.

A good case can be made that French Calvinists, and not the Pilgrims, actually celebrated the first "thanksgiving" in North America. Only the year was 1564, and the location was near Jacksonville, FL.  Click here: Op-Ed Contributor - A French Connection - NYTimes.com

But this group of Huguenots' time in the New World was short.  They were wiped out by the Spanish ("who were looking for Lutherans to burn and hang") the next year.

Comments

[dvopilgrim]

Unless someone from Anaheim could come up with their own "first" Thanksgiving, I submit that this 1564 service was the first Protestant Thanksgiving service. Read more here:

http://www.twoagespilgrims.com/doctrine/?p=1060

[Char]

My dad and I used to have odd conversations about various things-one such conversation was over what colonial nation we would rather live under if we had to. We picked Britain (we are Canadian after all). But it was a dead heat between the Spanish and the Portuguese over who we would absolutely never EVER want in a million years. This tips the Spaniards ahead...

[jaxdagger]

Jacksonville is my home. The Spanish's deliberate actions to wipe out the French Hugenots is very telling about the heart of papists. After researching this events locally, I noted Duval County's School system has a Ribault High. St. John's county (St. Augustine) doesn't have a Menedez High School.

[Ministry Addict]

The Real “First Thanksgiving:” The Pilgrims Meet the Egyptians

It’s fairly easy to pick up on the soteriological symbolism behind the true historical events of God calling His people out of the land of Egypt and into the promised land of Canaan, as they are recorded in the Bible. In the book of Exodus God uses Moses to get his people out of Egypt. Egypt is a picture of the “world.” During the first “Passover,” the people – by the application of blood – are set free from the bondage of the world, and come out of it. This is a picture of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. Then, God’s people pass through the Red Sea. This is a picture of baptism, God’s first step of obedience for every believer. Then comes the book of Leviticus, which is full of rules for helping God’s people stay clean in their freedom. In Exodus, God gets His people out of Egypt. In Leviticus, God gets Egypt out of His people.

It is interesting to see how God’s people – the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – end up in Egypt in the first place. The answer lies in the adventures of Jacob’s son, Joseph. His brothers sold him into slavery, and he wound up a ruler in Egypt. Through God’s providence, he was able to relocate his family there in a time of famine, so that they would survive.

There are many metaphors for life: a contest; a war; a game; a race; a battle; a trap; a puzzle. You were probably taught in school that the first Thanksgiving occurred when the Pilgrims met the Indians. But when Joseph brought his father, Jacob, to meet the Pharaoh of Egypt, Jacob explained that he saw life as a pilgrimage. “And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” (Genesis 47:9)

Christians truly are pilgrims in this life, for our ultimate home is not in this world. We are just passing through it on our way to our real home in Heaven. Vagabonds have no home. Fugitives are running away from home. Strangers are visiting someone else’s home. Pilgrims are on their way home. Are you living the pilgrim life today?