Ghost Magnet

12/10/2025

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12/02/2025

11/30/2025

11/29/2025

Dear Santa ….

11/27/2025

HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING
What You know is Probably Wrong…

Thanksgiving. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes… all part of what we know and love about what for many of us is our favorite holiday. Since the day the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians celebrated what we all learned in school was the first Thanksgiving in 1621, we’ve created the image in our heads of how that occasion took place...

But that's probably not at all what really happened. Here are a few examples of how that long ago celebration was different from how we’ve always thought it was:

* Thanksgiving didn’t start with the Pilgrims. It was an ancient pagan custom that everyone in England was familiar with. What the Pilgrims were celebrating was not a “thanksgiving,” which to them would have been an occasion for religious piety, but rather a harvest festival, full of feasting, dancing, singing, sports, and games, which the Pilgrims would have considered completely inappropriate activities for a religious observance. Remember, they were pretty strict about those things – these were the fun folks who brought us New England’s witch trials.

* The only items that we can be certain were on the dinner table for that Thanksgiving were venison and some type of wild fowl. Edward Winslow’s journal from the 1621 event noted that, as a celebration of the harvest, the governor sent the men out to shoot some birds. The Native Americans, who celebrated with them for three days, brought five deer to the party.

* There was no mention of turkey, but it *could* have been eaten. Based on other historical accounts, though, they likely feasted on other fowl like duck, partridge, and even birds that we no longer commonly consider food, like crane, swan, and eagle.

* Corn on the cob likely wasn’t on the menu. By that time of year, Indian corn would have been dried and prepared for grinding into meal. The pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce that we know today was absent from the table, too. The Pilgrims had no sugar and wheat flour was scarce. The Pilgrims may have had pudding from boiled pumpkin, sweetened by honey or syrup. Although we don’t traditionally associate seafood with Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims probably had cod, eel, clams, lobster, and even seal at their feast.

* The Pilgrims didn’t dress in black-and-white clothing with large buckles on their hats and shoes for Thanksgiving, as we usually see in cartoons, drawings, text books, and paintings. The Pilgrims wore black and white only on Sunday or for formal occasions. They would not have worn such things to a harvest festival. The large, ornamental buckles didn’t come into fashion until the late 1600s – and besides, the stoic and pious Pilgrims would have avoided them because they were frivolous.

Due to a poor harvest the next year – and the influx of settlers in the years that followed – the Pilgrims never celebrated another Thanksgiving harvest festival. It remained an irregularly-observed holiday in America for the next two centuries. The first time that the entire United States celebrated Thanksgiving was in 1777, but that was a one-time affair prompted by the Revolutionary War.

Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, celebrated on the last Thursday in November in 1863. Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it to the fourth Thursday in November 1939 and the rest, as they say, is history.

But whether the legend is wrong or not, Thanksgiving is a wonderful day to celebrate life with family and friends and give a thought to all of the good things that we have to be thankful for. Have a great day tomorrow and Happy Thanksgiving!

11/27/2025

🎃🍁

11/25/2025

AT THIS YEAR’S DEAD OF WINTER EVENT!* Held at Franklin Lodge in Alton, Illinois* FREE admission with canned goods!* Ticketed After Hours Events* Large Vendor Area — and More!

11/25/2025

Sad news.

🖤 Remembering Udo Kier 🖤
Cult icon and German actor Udo Kier has passed away at 81. Known for his chilling performances in “Flesh for Frankenstein” (1973) and “Blood for Dracula” (1974), Kier appeared in over 200 films and collaborated with legends like Andy Warhol.

11/12/2025

🌠🌌 Tonight Is Pure Magic!

🌍 Earth is now passing through the debris field of Comet Encke, sparking the Northern Taurid meteor shower.

🔥 Visible all night across the world, the Taurids are famous for their slow-moving, dazzling fireballs that can outshine the stars — even under the glow of a waning gibbous Moon.

☀️ On November 11, the Sun unleashed its most powerful flare of 2025 — an X5.1-class eruption from sunspot AR4274. It hurled three massive CMEs toward Earth.

The final “cannibal CME” is expected to hit tonight, possibly merging with earlier ones to spark G4-level geomagnetic storms — bright enough to paint auroras as far south as California and Alabama.

Happy skygazing!