Thanksgiving is the time for giving and being thankful for your friends and loved ones. Plus this is the time to feast on your favorite dishes! Did you also know there are a lot more fun facts about Thanksgiving that you probably didn’t even know about? We tend to celebrate many traditional national holidays without actually knowing the full background or history on how the day became a popularized day for everyone around the world to celebrate.
The First Thanksgiving was a three-day Event. In November 1621, the settlers’ first corn harvest was a success and Governor William Bradford invited the Plymouth Native Americans to feast on delicious fruits. The Wampanoag tribe came with food to share while joining the pilgrims. The settlers decided to make the dinner longer than intended!
Refusal of the holiday. Yep, that’s right. President Thomas Jefferson actually refused to make Thanksgiving a holiday. This is because he believed in the separation of church and state, and most people pray during this holiday. Therefore, he thought it would violate Americans first amendment.
In 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the third Thursday. This didn’t go so well with many football coaches because this messed up their regular weekday football games previously scheduled. Plus they then had to deal with calenders being printed with the wrong dates on them which led to the day being legally changed back to the fourth Thursday in November in 1942.
46 Million turkeys! Each year over 46 million turkeys are cooked in preparation for Thanksgiving.
Gobble, Gobble. Male turkeys who are sometimes called “Gobblers” are the only ones that actually make the sound “gobble, gobble.” Female turkeys make a cackling noise.
Thanksgiving started the creation of TV dinners. In 1953, a Swanson worker accidently ordered 260 tons of turkeys for Thanksgiving. In order to get rid of them all, a salesman by the name of Gerry Thomas came up with the idea of filling 5,000 aluminum trays with turkey plus other traditional Thanksgiving sides and selling them for only 98 cents which became popular overtime.