On Facebook today, Jess Rudolph of the Commedia dell'Arte troupe I Verdi Confusi observed that the female servant Mask, Colombina, is grateful that Thanksgiving is an American holiday and outside her historical period. Of course, Colombina still lives, and it was only because he was posting to the Society for Creative Anachronism that he would assert she has a "period." But someone on the thread observed that there was a pre-Advent feast before our Thanksgiving on St. Martin's Day. Similar to Carnevale before Lent, the Festa di San Martino was a chance to indulge oneself before the relative austerity of a waiting and fasting season. (Lent is waiting for Easter; Advent is waiting for Christmas.) Here is what Wikipedia says about St. Martin: " Saint Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who was baptised as an adult and became a bishop in a French town. The most notable of his saintly acts was he had cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, t