ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) -- In Massachusetts, Michael Gannon says he is known as "the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving."

Gannon, a University of Florida history professor, insists it was a group of Spanish explorers and not the Pilgrims who first celebrated Thanksgiving in the New World. The date was Sept. 8, 1565 -- in St. Augustine.

That's when Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 Spanish settlers, celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving and invited the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site, he said.

Menendez and his followers probably dined on cocido -- a stew made from salted pork and garbanzo beans and laced with garlic seasoning -- hard sea biscuits and red wine, said Gannon.

The 1565 celebration wasn't even the first Thanksgiving, Gannon said. Numerous Thanksgivings for a safe voyage and landing had been made in Florida by such explorers as Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513 and 1521; Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528; Hernando de Soto in 1529; Father Luis Cancer de Barbastro in 1549; and Tristan de Luna in 1559.

"By the time the Pilgrims came to Plymouth, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal," Gannon said.

So, if the Spanish were first, why do Pilgrims and Plymouth get all the credit?

"It is the victors who write the histories," Gannon said. "England won out over Spain for the mastery of the North American continent, so the early English ceremonies achieved wide currency in history books and eclipsed our knowledge of the earlier Spanish celebrations on Thanksgiving."

David Nolan, a writer and historian in St. Augustine, recalled the time in 1979 when he addressed the Florida Society of Mayflower Descendants in St. Augustine.

Nolan told the descendants that long before the Mayflower landed, St. Augustine was wrestling with the housing problems of royal officials, the marriage of the governor's son without permission and the arrest of French and English pirates.

"By the time the Pilgrims scraped together their meal, we were already so far advanced as to have housing, family, and law-and-order problems in Florida," Nolan said.

-- From the Associated Press wire