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8 Fun Facts
While I’m sure you are busy scheduling family trips and preparing the ingredients for a fulfilling Thanksgiving dinner, it’s good to take a little time to go beyond that.
Thanksgiving is more than pilgrims, Native Americans, family, and food. It’s also a chance for history, knowledge, and culture. With food.
Get ready to discover eight fun facts about Thanksgiving you may not know, at least as you wait for the turkey.
1- To Pilgrims, The First Thanksgiving Wasn’t Really Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving celebrations have existed for centuries, just not as we know them.
People celebrated Thanksgiving by praying and thanking God for the blessings provided, including plentiful crops, war victories, and miscellaneous favors. And, instead of eating, they favored fasting.
This means the iconic First Thanksgiving—the gathering in Plymouth between pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans back in 1621—was not considered a Thanksgiving festivity at all, merely a harvest festival to celebrate the plentiful crops, and unrelated to their Thanksgiving.
Eventually, both traditions merged and created the Thanksgiving we celebrate today.
2- The Food We Eat Has Changed Since Then.
And it has changed a lot.
For starters, sugar was a luxury, so the table featured no desserts nor cranberries, as they are extremely tart and require sweetening to be palatable. They had corn instead, mostly in the form of porridge.
One centerpiece of the meal was venison, brought to the feast by the Natives. The meat is far from a staple in Thanksgiving tables nowadays, but back then it was a prized meat.
Turkey, however, was present—alongside geese, quail, ducks, and the now-extinct passenger pigeons.
But who cares if they could have extinct birds for dinner? They didn’t have sweet potatoes nor pie, so the winner is clear.
3- Benjamin Franklin Didn’t Want Turkey to be the National Bird —But he Liked it More Than the Bald Eagle .
Alright, I know the idea makes you laugh—turkeys look kind of silly when compared with the magnificence of the bald eagle—but Benjamin Franklin was not joking.
While he never defended the candidacy of the turkey for the title of national bird like the myth says, his support for the goofy-looking bird as a noble symbol is entirely true.
On a private letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin admitted he considered the bald eagle “of bad moral character”, due to its opportunistic hunting methods. Contrastingly, he considered the turkey a respectable and honest bird that, despite being “a little vain & silly”, was a creature of courage.
Regardless of Franklin’s intentions, we have to be thankful the turkey isn’t the national bird—it’d feel pretty bad to stuff and eat a symbol of freedom.
4- Abraham Lincoln Made Thanksgiving an Annual Holiday.
While regularly celebrated across the country, George Washington proclaimed the first official Thanksgiving in the United States back in 1798, by calling for the population to enjoy the event nationwide.
However, this lacked any kind of imperative power—mostly because members of the Congress objected, and considered that authority for such an action was only for the governors.
From then on, presidents proclaimed official Thanksgiving days repeatedly, but none turned it into a national holiday—until Abraham Lincoln did so in 1863.
5- Thanksgiving’s Main Symbol Comes From Antiquity.
The cornucopia—also known as the horn of plenty—is an ancient Greco-Roman emblem of abundance, nourishment, and prosperity.
According to mythology, the cornucopia used to be the horn of a sacred goat—Amalthea, the being that nurtured Zeus as he hid from his bloodthirsty father Cronus.
It is said that, while being nursed, Zeus accidentally broke her horn. Filled with regret, he promised Amalthea that the horn would be filled with whatever she were to need—thus, the horn of plenty was born.
Since Thanksgiving is a celebration associated with abundance and harvest, the cornucopia is the quintessential symbol of the holiday.
6- Many Presidents Contributed to the Turkey Pardoning Tradition.
The first of them all was President Lincoln—who at this point should be considered the Father of Thanksgiving—since it is said his 1863 clemency of a turkey at the petition of his son Tad started the tradition.
After regularly delivering turkeys as gifts to the White House, in 1947 it turned into an official practice for the National Turkey Federation to present the birds to the President of the United States right before Thanksgiving—pardoning excluded.
Multiple turkeys were spared during the presidencies of Kennedy, Nixon and Carter, but they were exceptions rather than the norm—until Ronald Reagan started the tradition in 1981. Afterwards, George H. W. Bush transformed the tradition into a formal ceremony that continues today.
7- Back in 2013, We had “Thanksgivukkah”.
As its name highlights, the event celebrated the overlap of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah on November 28, creating the most powerful holiday known to date—Thanksgivukkah, a day when Jewish-Americans could celebrate the Festival of Lights, eat the delicious fried dishes, and stuff themselves with turkey at the same time.
The event became a sensation—and rightfully so. November 28 is the latest date Thanksgiving can be, and also the earliest plausible day for Hanukkah to begin. It was, in other words, a rare encounter.
So rare, in fact, that it won’t happen again—at least not until year 76695.
8- Many Countries Celebrate their own Version of Thanksgiving.
The themes behind Thanksgiving are common across humanity, so multiple countries have fairly similar celebrations.
Canada celebrates it much like America, except on the second Monday of October. Swaziland has the Incwala, a festival dedicated to the first fruit harvest of the year.
In Japan, they celebrate Kinro Kansha no Hi, or Labor Thanksgiving Day, while Korea has Chuseok, translated as Autumn Eve. Argentina enjoys the National Grape Harvest Festival, and Germany partakes in the Erntedankfest.
Of course, this is just a small sample—many cultures have their own versions of the harvest festival. Because despite our differences, the gratefulness for the blessings received is a universal sensation.
That, and the enjoyment of delicious food.