Ten fun facts about Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is a fun time of year with all the family traditions and activities and dinners and even the sports.

So here’s ten fun facts with which to wow everyone as you’re all sitting around the dinner table on Thursday.

1. In 1863, Thanksgiving officially became the third national holiday celebrated in America [July 4th, and Washington’s Birthday were the first two.]
2. In 1939, the date for Thanksgiving was moved up a week by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season to help American retailers.
3. Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who wrote the childrens’ nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” lobbied American presidents for a national Thanksgiving Day for 17 years until 1863, when twenty days before his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation making a national Thanksgiving day.
4. Lincoln also accidentally started the trend of pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving when a turkey named Jack was “pardoned” from his fate at the request of his son Tad. (Harry S. Truman made the practice an official one in 1947).
5. Although our Thanksgiving celebration is most often associated with the 1621 feast between the Pilgrims and the Wamanoag tribe, it’s not the FIRST such celebration to take place within what is now known as the United States, The ‘earliest’ was in 1541 when the Coronado expedition broke bread in the panhandle area of Texas.
6. Speaking of oldest, the oldest Thanksgiving Parade does NOT belong to Macy’s but to it’s former competitor (and arch-rival) Gimbels! And that parade was held in Philadelphia (not New York City) in 1920.
7. The largest Thanksgiving parade honors do go to Macy’s who held their first parade in NYC in 1924.
8. Macy’s first parade that year (and for three years thereafter) included LIVE animals from the Central Park Zoo.
9. In 1928, Macy’s decided to use balloon animals instead of real ones, and Felix the Cat (a popular cartoon character at the time) became the first balloon float (and it was sponsored by Goodyear).
10. Thanksgiving football games are not a new tradition. They actually began in 1876 with the first annual Turkey Day contest between Yale and Princeton.  Professional football finally got into the act in 1934 with their Turkey Day Annual between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears. And as a last footnote, the Dallas Cowboys, in 1966, decided to join the Lions and Bears, providing us with afternoons of family, turkey, and football.

And from our house to yours:

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Food for thought (and tummy).

Mac