Things You May Not Know About Thanksgiving

Information and video courtesy of The History Channel

We’re all familiar with the story of the first Thanksgiving when the pilgrims invited local native Americans to share a meal with them. We bet you didn’t know Thanksgiving didn’t become a regular tradition until more than 200 years later! That first Thanksgiving in 1621 wasn’t just one big meal, it was a three-day festival of eating, hunting, and other entertainments in honor of the pilgrims first successful harvest. The Indians killed 5 deer as gifts for the colonists, so venison was definitely on the menu.

But we bet you didn’t know that turkey was not.

They also didn’t have pumpkin pie or potatoes, which hadn’t been introduced to New England yet.

While they may have eaten cranberries, they would have been served plain, not in a sauce or relish.

The pilgrims didn’t plan on starting a Thanksgiving tradition. In fact, they didn’t repeat the November celebration of subsequent years. In 1798, President George Washington announced the first ever national Thanksgiving holiday, which took place on Thursday, November 25 ^th 1789. But it didn’t become an annual traditional nationwide until the 19^th century. That’s when an American writer named Sara Josepha Hale, most famous for writing the nursery, Mary Had A Little Lamb , was inspired by a diary of pilgrim life to recreate that first Thanksgiving feast.

Beginning in 1827, Hale waged a nearly 30-year campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She also published recipes for pumpkin pie, turkey, and stuffing, that probably didn’t appear on the pilgrim’s plates, but would become a staple of modern Thanksgiving meals.

In 1863, in the midst of the civil war, President Abraham Lincoln announced that the nation would celebrate Thanksgiving every year on the final Thursday in November.

BUT did you know that in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to move the holiday up a week to give depression-era retailers more time to make money during the pre-Christmas shopping season. The move was widely criticized, and in 1941 Roosevelt signed a bill fixing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November where it stays today.

One of the quirkiest Thanksgiving traditions began in 1989 when President George H.W. Bush granted the first official pardon to a turkey. Every November since then the current oval office occupant has given a reprieve to one or two turkeys, sending them to retirement on a farm rather than to a dinner table.

So it only began in the late 20 ^th century. The story has become one of the more unusual chapters in the long history of Thanksgiving tradition.

Looking for some extra table space for the holidays? A fold in half table is a perfect and affordable space saver this year.