In reading through a past issue of House Beautiful recently, we discovered this fabulous list of wild and wonderful facts about Thanksgiving. Enjoy!
Thanksgiving was originally celebrated in mid-October. President Lincoln moved the holiday to it’s current November date to coincide with the Pilgrim’s landing on Plymouth Rock.
Although pumpkin pie has been an important part of the Thanksgiving meal since the 1700’s, it is apple pie that is America’s favorite, with pumpkin coming in second, according to the American Pie Council.
Female turkeys don’t gobble. What?! The female birds purr and cackle.
The tradition of football on Thanksgiving was started by college teams, beginning in 1876 with a game between Yale and Princeton.
Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to his daughter, wrote, "For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country...For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird."
The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, held in 1924, included monkeys, bears, camels, and elephants from the Central Park Zoo, instead of the giant balloons we enjoy today.
Snoopy has made more appearances in the Macy’s parade than any other character.
Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote to President Lincoln, asking that he declare a national day of thanksgiving in order to help heal the trauma of the Civil War, also wrote the favorite childhood song, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Thanksgiving leftovers led to the invention of those iconic TV dinners we so fondly remember. How? In 1953, Swanson overestimated the number of frozen turkeys that the company should order for Thanksgiving, leaving the company with 260 tons of extra turkey after the holiday. Rather than eating the loss (pun intended), a salesman with the company came up with the idea to create and sell individual turkey dinners, complete with cornbread dressing, gravy, peas, and sweet potatoes, all on reheatable trays. By the end of 1954, Swanson sold 10 million frozen turkey meals and thus, the TV dinner was born.
In 1989, George H.W. Bush was the first president to pardon a turkey. But did you know, that in November of 1926, Calvin Coolidge was gifted a live raccoon, intended to be his Thanksgiving dinner. He hated the idea of eating a raccoon, so decided to keep it as a pet instead.
The day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, is the busiest day of the year for plumbers. We’ll leave that factoid there.
Have you wondered if there is a connection between the turkey bird and the country of Turkey? Well, there is. During the Ottoman Empire, guinea fowl were exported from East Africa via Turkey to Europe, and Europeans started calling the birds turkey-cocks or turkey-hens due to the trade route. So, when Europeans first sailed to North America and discovered birds that looked similar to guinea fowl, they called them "turkeys."
Before becoming the Christmas anthem we all know and love, “Jingle Bells” was titled “The One Horse Open Sleigh” and it’s composer, James Pierpont, had intended it to be a Thanksgiving song. In 1859, the title of the song was officially changed.
