Do you ever just stop and think about what really is true about Thanksgiving? I mean, we hear all the rumors that it didn’t actually happen, there was no turkey and they didn’t even sit down and all eat together. During this Thanksgiving break, while taking a break from eating that turkey and sweet potato pie, take some time to check out these eight truths about the day most people don’t know much about!Â
1. Most of the food we have on our table at Thanksgiving isn’t what was known during the original feast; potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries and even pumpkin pie wasn’t discovered at this time. Instead, what they most likely ate was fish, fowl, deer and maize.
2. Let’s talk cranberries and turkey. An estimated 46 million turkeys ended up on American dinner tables last Thanksgiving, and around 768 million pounds of cranberries were grown, mostly by Wisconsin and Massachusetts farmers.
3. Turkeys never struck me as a strong, powerful bird, but they seemed like that to Ben Franklin. This founding father strongly felt that the bird we now serve up for dinner should be the symbol of America instead of the bald eagle. Why? He felt that the turkey was a respectable bird.
4. Football and Thanksgiving always seem to go hand in hand. During the original Thanksgiving, sports were a huge focal point as well (I mean, except for the fact that their sports were shooting and stool ball).
5. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade began in 1924 when Macy’s employees recruited animals from the zoo to march on Thanksgiving Day (sort of a kickoff to the holiday shopping season). And in 1927, helium balloons were introduced instead of the animals from the Central Park Zoo.
6. Black Friday is the day you should be rolling around in the left over turkey and gravy, but you are up at 3 a.m. waiting in line at stores for the best deals of the year. Also, Cyber Monday stared in 2005 and offers similar bargain deals online. Why wait in the cold anymore?
7. Every Thanksgiving, the roads are packed with bumper to bumper traffic and everyone is booking planes and trains home. Well, almost 39 million US citizens will drive more than 50 miles to their holiday destinations. So that feeling of everyone in one place trying to go somewhere all at one time? That actually happens.
8. Canada celebrates it’s own Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October. Weird right? Well, in Canada, the celebration is held in honor of the original celebration in 1578 of the explorers’ safe landing in New Brunswick.
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