Often we think our national traditions are older than they really are. For example, Thanksgiving. While it is true that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag had a harvest feast at the Plymouth colony in 1621, Thanksgiving was not an annual occurence until much, much later. (And rivals for the “first” Thanksgiving held in America include celebrations by a 1541 Spanish expedition led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in the Texas panhandle; by French Huguenots near modern-day Jacksonville, Florida, in 1564; and by the Jamestown colony in 1610, according to the Library of Congress.)