The Snood and Wattle Make the Gobble!

“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with others they only see once a year, & then discover once a year is way too often.” ~Johnny Carson

Kicking off Thanksgiving Day with some fun facts and we might have a few you haven’t heard before.

Here we go with 25 Totally Random & Fun Facts for Thanksgiving!

1. 
   

   The first Thanksgiving was held in the fall of 1621. There were approximately 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians. Aside from the huge difference in what was served then, and now, their feast lasted three days!

2. Thanksgiving can take place as early as November 22 and as late as November 28. (Hint: it’s always the 4^th Thursday!)

3. 91% of Americans eat TURKEY for Thanksgiving.

4. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the 2^nd oldest Thanksgiving parade. (Gimbels Department Store was first!)

5. Baby turkeys are called poults and male turkeys are called gobblers.

6. Sarah Josepha Hale was an American magazine editor and also an author. She is credited for campaigning to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. But did you know she also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb?

7. The snood (male turkeys only, please) is the red growth coming from the forehead. The part underneath the throat is the wattle.

8. The Snoopy balloon has appeared in the Macy’s Parade more often than any other character.

9. The name turkey goes way back to when the Europeans discovered how much they loved the guinea fowl that was imported to their continent by, you guessed it, Turkish merchants! Then, when the Spaniards came to America, they found a bird that tasted like the guinea fowl and they called it turkey also.

10. Thanksgiving was traditionally celebrated on the last Thursday of November, set by Abraham Lincoln. But in 1939, President Roosevelt pushed it up a week early. Why, you ask? To increase the time for Christmas shopping during the Great Depression!

11. Only male turkeys, called toms, gobble. Females, or hens, cackle. (No comments from the male population, thank you very much.)

12. Swanson TV Dinners were born out of the over-abundance of leftover frozen Thanksgiving turkeys. Who knew?

13. 3,000 is the number of calories consumed by the average person during a Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t forget that most families eat at least twice that day and snack on rich desserts and appetizers in between which can bump it up as high as 4,000-6,000 calories. That would require eight hours of exercise to burn it off. Yikes!

14. Let’s add to #13 and insert that it has been estimated that the original Thanksgiving gatherers only consumed about 550 calories at their feast…probably no pies or stuffing.

15. Another DID YOU KNOW: Californians consume more turkeys than any other state.

16. More than 44 million people watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV every year. Three million actually attend in person. It’s a miracle….on 34th Street (ba-dum-bump…The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade starts at 77th St and Central Park West and heads down to 34th Street in Herald Square.)

17. A 25 pound turkey contains about 70% white meat and 30% dark. (What’s your favorite?)

18. Wild turkeys can run 20 miles per hour when they are scared!

19. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first meal in space, after walking on the moon, was roasted turkey in neat, little aluminum foil packets.

20. One dish I personally can pass on is the Green Bean Casserole. Campbell’s Soup created it for an annual cookbook over 50 years ago and they now sell $20 million+ worth of cream of mushroom soup for Thanksgiving. (Will it be on your table?)

21. The first Pilgrims did not have forks. They used spoons, knives and, ahem, their fingers. Some things never change.

22. It is believed that only FIVE women were present at the first Thanksgiving. Many of the women settlers didn’t survive the extremely difficult first year on new soil.

23. Every year, since 1975, there is another celebration on Thanksgiving Day on the island of Alcatraz. It is called UN-Thanksgiving Day, commemorating the survival of Native Americans after the Europeans settled in America.

24. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, cranberries were originally used by Native Americans to treat arrow wounds and also to dye their clothes! (Canned or fresh on your table?) 

25. And finally, I have saved the best for last! Turkeys….wait for it….have heart attacks! The United States Air Force conducted test runs that were breaking the sound barrier. Nearby was a flock of turkeys that promptly dropped dead. Death by heart attack.

Share with us some of the family traditions you will be partaking in or feel free to comment on any or all of the trivia info! We would love for you to join the conversation. Have a blessed day with your family and friends.