Before you loosen your belt and find a comfortable place on the couch to nap this Thursday, ask yourself:

What are we celebrating?
a) A feast day honoring the ancient god, pigus dermus.
b) The festival of the ancient god, pigus outus.
c) A feast commemorating the bravery of the Pilgrims who set sail for an unknown world 3,000 miles from home.

On Thanksgiving, who's the one getting thanked?
1) The Indians
2) Mother Earth
3) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Why did the Pilgrims leave England for America?
a) They were seeking religious freedom
b) They were searching for a better environment for their out-of-control kids
c) It's a trick question. The Pilgrims actually came to America from Holland.

OK, how'd you do? If you're like a lot of Americans, you don't know as much about Thanksgiving's origins as you thought.

It's really not your fault. The holiday has fallen into politically-correct disrepute. Walk into a Border's Books, you'll find plenty of books about Thanksgiving. But most of them offer a deeply distorted view of the holiday. For instance, readers will get the distinct impression that the Pilgrims were atheists, because all mention of God has been omitted from many a modern holiday tale.

Pilgrim motives are under assault, as well. Some books, and even the exhibit in Plymouth, Mass. suggest that the Pilgrims came to America hoping to become Elizabethan versions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet: They claim that the Pilgrims came to America for economic opportunity.

If money had been important to these families, they would never have left England in the first place. Most suffered serious financial reversals when they fled their homeland — reversals that dogged them the rest of their lives.

Still other books suggest the Pilgrims held their feast in order to thank the Indians. Wrong! Assuredly, certain Indians — Squanto, especially — were key to the Pilgrims' survival. But despite illness, homesickness, the death of half their members the previous winter and the ongoing difficulty of scratching out a living in an unknown land, the Pilgrims thanked God for blessing them.

Actually, the fact that they spent three days thanking God instead of cursing Him tells you much about what their motives. Their story began some 14 years prior to the Mayflower voyage. In England, in the early 17th century, you were a member of the Church of England — or you were in trouble. In 1606, those who objected to aspects of church doctrine formed their own secret congregations and were known as Separatists. These worshippers were persecuted by government authorities, prompting the Separatists to flee England for Holland in 1608.

While they now enjoyed religious freedom, they also suffered desperate poverty. Most had been farmers in England; now they sought work as wool combers, tailors, pipe makers and carpenters. They were growing old before their time and becoming discouraged.

But the Separatists had an even greater concern than putting food on the table. Their kids were assimilating a little too well into Dutch culture — an aspect of the Pilgrim story we hear little about today.

Pick up a copy of William Bradford's diary and you'll find him anguishing over the way the congregation's teenagers were imitating the bad behavior of Dutch teens. Of all the sorrows to be born, Bradford writes, the heaviest was that many of their children, observing

the great licentiousness of youth in that countrie and the manifold temptations of the place, were drawne away by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting the raines off their neks, and departing from their parents.

Some of them tended to "dissolutnes and the danger of their soules, to the great greefe of their parents and dishonor of God," Bradford notes.

Bradford puts an end to the notion that the Pilgrims traveled to the New World to get rich quick. He writes that while the Separatists hoped day to day living would be a bit easier in America, their chief motivations were the spiritual welfare of their children and "a great hope and inward zeall [for] laying some good foundation ... for the propagating and advancing the gospell of the kingdom of Christ" in "the vast and unpeopled countries of America."

Although the plan to leave Holland "caused many fears and doubts amongst them selves," and some, "out of their fears ... sought to diverte from it," the little band ultimately decided that "the dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible," and that "through the help of God, by fortitude and patience," these difficulties "might either be borne or overcome," Bradford records.

Thus, a dozen years after leaving England, the Separatists prepared to travel to the New World. As soon as they were able, they sailed back to England and picked up additional passengers — fellow saints as well as a number of strangers whose willingness to go along helped pay the costs of the journey. They then set sail on the Mayflower to "those remote parts of the world," as Bradford put it.

Landing on Cape Cod instead of Virginia, as they'd expected, the Pilgrims endured a harsh New England winter that took the lives of half their number. In the spring they recovered from their illnesses; built homes; and planted English barley, peas and wheat, plus 20 acres of Indian corn, aided by Squanto. In April, the Mayflower's Captain Christopher Jones set sail for England. Despite the terrible winter and anticipated future hardships, not a single Pilgrim went back with him.

That fall — in October — the Pilgrims gathered in their harvest and spent three days feasting. While contemporary authors claim this was nothing more than a day of celebration, William Bradford writes that it was a day of thanksgiving to God: "The Lord sent [us] such seasonable showers that through his blessing [there was] a fruitful and liberal harvest.... For which mercy ... they set apart a day of thanksgiving."

That day turned into three, marking both America's first three-day weekend and the first church potluck. The Pilgrims invited Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, who arrived with 90 braves and five freshly-slaughtered deer; the Pilgrims provided everything else. The first Thanksgiving menu is described in The Pilgrim Way, by Robert M. Bartlett:

The Pilgrims furnished geese, ducks and turkey brought down by their matchlocks. They spread rough tables with a tempting array of these meats, along with lobster, clams, fish, eels, beans, pumpkin, salads of leeks and water cress, corn cakes, Indian pudding sweetened with wild honey, grapes, plums and red and white wine made from wild grapes."

Evidently the idea of stuffing ourselves, as well as the turkey, originated with the Pilgrims. We can also credit (or blame) them for blending Thanksgiving feasting with football. On that first Thanksgiving weekend nearly 400 years ago, the women cooked while the men took part in various sports and contests of skill. (At least the Pilgrims burned off their culinary excesses instead of simply plopping down in front of the TV, their eyes as glazed as the Thanksgiving yams.)

Given that the Pilgrims embodied so much of what Americans value, it's a pity we remember them primarily for inviting their friends over for a big meal and sports. We ought to remember them, as well, for having the courage to face down dangers and hardships, their defiance of a government that attempted to dictate how they should worship, and their insistence on putting radical obedience to God — and their commitment to their kids' spiritual welfare — above a comfortable lifestyle. Even Christians are beginning to forget what the Pilgrims were all about. On Thanksgiving, we tend to content ourselves with a prayer of thanks to God for our blessings — a brief prayer, so the gravy won't get cold.

But the story of the Pilgrims is a heritage we need to protect. If we don't, we may soon see Thanksgiving treated as Columbus Day is in some cities: a day to be marked with contempt. Already the cultural corrupters are portraying the Pilgrims as the original religious zealots who stole land (and great holiday recipes) from the Indians; people who intended to force their morality down other people's throats.

For example, a few Thanksgivings ago on the Mall in Washington D.C., Native American Indian Nathan Philips and his family camped out in a teepee. They went, he informed the Washington Post, as part of a nationwide commemoration of Thanksgiving as a "day of mourning" to "remind people that a lot of American Indians don't have too much to be thankful for."

What many don't know is that the Pilgrims signed and kept a 55-year peace treaty with Massasoit, the Wampanoag Indian chief who welcomed the Pilgrims as friends.

Protecting the historical Thanksgiving means knowing the truth about the Pilgrims. You can find it in diaries written by Pilgrim fathers William Bradford and Edward Winslow, and books by historians like Robert M. Bartlett, author of The Pilgrim Way.

Ultimately, the Pilgrims are a reminder that following Christ means being willing to give up everything for Him: Mother and father, home and jobs, comfort and amusements, the familiarity of our own country and a predictable future of prosperity. The Pilgrims were willing. Are we?