Fun Thanksgiving History

I don't know about you but it's easy for me to get super excited and wrapped up (pun intended) in the Christmas season; so much so that I often overlook Thanksgiving. But there’s so much to like about this one-day holiday that goes beyond watching football, overindulging in a delicious feast and cat-napping like it’s going out of style. For fun I decided to investigate this National Holiday.

You may know this or perhaps it will come to you as a surprise that Thanksgiving started as a three day festival and was originated around 1621. There were more men than women in attendance and they didn’t eat turkey!! #gulp Instead one might have found a menu of venison, duck, goose oysters, lobster, eel and fish along with pumpkins and cranberries. Where was the pie (just kidding)? Interestingly, as our young nation developed, Congress asked George Washington to make Thanksgiving a one-day holiday by proclamation. Later Thomas Jefferson came along and said  “nope” and chose not to celebrate it. Later on during the Civil War, Abraham Lincolon made Thanksgiving a Federal Holiday to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. But wait.. there’s more…these days we observe Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, thanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt, but it wasn’t without some controversy. That’s quite the history, don’t you think?  Here are a few more fun facts about Thanksgiving that you may want to incorporate in your Thanksgiving mealtime conversation:

• Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a National holiday on October 3, 1863. Sarah Joseph Hale, the woman who wrote “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” convinced Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a National holiday after writing letters for 17 years.
• There are four towns in the United States named “Turkey.” They can be found in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina.
• The average number of calories consumed on Thanksgiving is 4,500.
• Butterball answers more than 100,000 turkey-cooking questions via their Butterball Turkey Hotline each November and December.
• The tradition of football on Thanksgiving began in 1876 with a game between Yale and Princeton. The first NFL games were played on Thanksgiving in 1920.
• Only male turkeys actually make the sound “gobble gobble”! Who knew!!!

This Thanksgiving, I just want to say that I am thankful for my family, friends, great neighbors and I’m super grateful to Johnson Development for Grand Central Park! Lee and I love this Community and the memories we are making here at GCP. Happy Thanksgiving!! Gobble til you wobble!!