All About Thanksgiving

Did you know that one president tried to switch the date of Thanksgiving? Another president refused to celebrate Thanksgiving. One president decided to spare the turkey's life! Another president wanted a song for Thanksgiving, and I'm sure you know it! However, there are many things about Thanksgiving that you might not know. 

When and How Did Thanksgiving Start? 

One of the first Thanksgiving celebrations was in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The true site of the first Thanksgiving in North America isn’t known to historians. Sixty years before Plymouth, a Spanish fleet came and planted a cross to christen the settlement of St. Augustine. To celebrate their arrival, they had a festive meal. In 1789, in celebration of the victory of the Battle of Sagatora, George Washington called for a national day of thanks. During the Civil War, both the Confederacy and the Union observed Thanksgiving Day.

Food! 

There's no record of eating turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Instead, there was deer, a lot of local seafood, and fruits, including pumpkin. There were no mashed potatoes recorded at early Thanksgivings, and pumpkin pie has been a part of Thanksgiving since the 18th century. One year they had a molasses shortage and they postponed the Thanksgiving feast just for pumpkin pie. Canned cranberries also weren't in the first Thanksgiving. Native Americans used and ate cranberries, just not in the way eaten traditionally today, and the first canned cranberries were produced in 1912. 

Fun Facts

Thomas Jefferson was famously the only Founding Father who refused to declare the days of Thanksgiving celebration. Abraham Lincoln called for an annual Thanksgiving celebration; the proclamation was the result of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” President John F. Kennedy was the first president to spare the turkey’s life in the 1960s. The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was in 1924, and balloons became a part of it in 1927. Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 tried to push Thanksgiving back a week for the Christmas shopping season, and Congress ended up moving it back in 1941.

See? There are many things I am sure you didn’t know about Thanksgiving! Who would’ve thought we didn't even eat turkey at the first Thanksgiving? We don't even know when the first Thanksgiving was, and yet we still celebrate it to this day!