Thanksgiving Facts and Trivia

Sandwiched in between the Halloween candy and Christmas decorations, people tend to forget that Thanksgiving has a long and storied history. Here are a few facts about Thanksgiving that you may not know:

The first Thanksgiving most likely wasn’t in Plymouth.

 There are many places in the United States that claim to be the location of the first Thanksgiving and they all predate the Pilgrims’ feast in 1621. Even Jacksonville lays a claim to the first Thanksgiving since the French Huguenots who settled at Fort Caroline also had a similar feast in June of 1564.

The so-called First Thanksgiving actually lasted three days.

Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower, wrote a letter to a friend back in England describing the meal. It’s only one of two surviving sources that we have today from the time that talks about the First Thanksgiving.

We’re not entirely sure what all the Pilgrims ate at the first Thanksgiving, but we know what they didn’t eat.

 The average American Thanksgiving dinner usually includes turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Sweet potatoes were originally from the Caribbean and white potatoes come from South America. Neither of which were found in New England in 1621. We also know that the Pilgrims didn’t have access to a lot of butter or wheat flour, so that rules out pumpkin pie.

Americans eat A LOT of turkey!

You probably already knew this one. However, turkey was never the centerpiece for any of the alleged first Thanksgivings. Yet 88% of Americans report serving turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, Americans ate 46 million turkeys for Thanksgiving in 2013 alone!  In 2012, Americans consumed an estimated 736 million pounds of turkey meat. Turkey was even the first meal eaten by astronauts on the Moon! However, contrary to popular belief, turkey doesn’t make you tired after you eat it.

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Feel free to share these facts around the table as you enjoy your dinner! I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-Mr. Haas