THANKSGIVING FACTS & TRIVIA (2024)

FAQs

THANKSGIVING FACTS & TRIVIA? ›

Would you rather eat Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant or at home? Would you rather take a nap after the meal or watch a football game? Would you rather always smell like turkey or always smell like gravy? Would you rather be in the Thanksgiving Day parade, or be one of the hosts commenting on the parade?

Would you rather eat Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant or at home? Would you rather take a nap after the meal or watch a football game? Would you rather always smell like turkey or always smell like gravy? Would you rather be in the Thanksgiving Day parade, or be one of the hosts commenting on the parade?

Question: What meats were served at the first Thanksgiving celebration? Answer: Venison, swan, duck and goose were likely—not turkey! Question: What seafood was served at the first Thanksgiving feast? Question: Who was the first President to pardon a turkey?

The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “Thanksgivings,” days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought. The U.S. Continental Congress proclaimed a national Thanksgiving upon the enactment of the Constitution, for example.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out. A shrimp's heart is in its head. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is believed to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

Breaking The Wishbone

One beloved tradition comes with every holiday turkey: the wishbone. Two people pull the bone apart, and whoever has the larger half will have their holiday wish come true.

There are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

During the autumn of 1621, at least 90 Wampanoag joined 52 English people at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, to mark a successful harvest. It is remembered today as the “First Thanksgiving,” although no one back then used that term.

Turkey. There's a good chance the Pilgrims and Wampanoag did in fact eat turkey as part of that very first Thanksgiving. Wild turkey was a common food source for people who settled Plymouth.

Most Traditional Thanksgiving Foods. A traditional Thanksgiving meal consists of roast turkey and many sides including stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans and cranberry sauce, with pumpkin pie as dessert.

What is a kids fact about Thanksgiving? ›

The tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving dates back to the 1600s. The Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony held the first Thanksgiving in 1621. They had landed in America on their ship, the Mayflower, in December 1620. Only half of them survived that first winter.

The national holiday began as a celebration of the harvest and other blessings, per the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Thanksgiving, however, has since moved away from its Puritan roots and has become a day to "symbolize intercultural peace, America's opportunity for newcomers, and the sanctity of home and family."

"Jingle Bells" was originally a Thanksgiving Day song.

Before becoming a Christmas holiday anthem, "Jingle Bells" was an 1857 song titled "One Horse Open Sleigh," and its composer, James Pierpont, intended it to be a Thanksgiving Day song.

Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States. The holiday superseded Evacuation Day, a de facto national holiday that had been held on November 25 each year prior to the Civil War and commemorated the British withdrawal from the United States after the American Revolution.