- Most folks know about and attribute the first American Thanksgiving to the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1621. Not everyone would agree - when and where would some folks in Texas argue the first Thanksgiving really took place?
- It's become a pretty regular occurrence that Presidents "pardon" their Turkey every year. Which President started this tradition and when?
- A lot of us will tune in, at least briefly, to the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade from New York.
- When was the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?
- When and what was the first balloon in the Parade?
- More than a few of us will also be watching some football before or after (hopefully not during) our Thanksgiving meal. When was the first football game played on Thanksgiving Day? Who were the teams?
- The Bald Eagle is the national symbol of the U.S. Who argued passionately that the Turkey should have been given that honor?
- Which state produces the most Turkeys?
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Ho, Ho, Ho!
Ho, Ho, Ho! Oh wait, wrong holiday. Driving home at night I've already seen many houses all decked out with their holiday lights blazing, on T.V. you can't avoid the holiday advertising which seems to have taken the place of the political advertising, and everyone seems fixated on Black Friday deals. In between all that I think there is another holiday that I hope everyone will take a moment to enjoy. Not every country celebrates Thanksgiving, and in the countries that do its not always at this time of year (in Canada its the second Monday of October). Even in the U.S. Thanksgiving didn't get a fixed date until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November as the national day of thanks. So to get you in the spirit here's a quick quiz to test your knowledge of some of the American traditions surrounding Thanksgiving:
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So here are the answers!
ReplyDeleteAccording to the blog "Pardon a Turkey? 7 Thanksgiving Traditions Explained" by Tia Ghose (http://www.livescience.com/24929-7-thanksgiving-traditions-explained.html) residents of San Elizario, Texas (just south of Ciudad Juarez in western Texas), claim the first Thanksgiving feast was celebrated in 1598 by Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate. After surviving a treacherous crossing through the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, Juan and 500 fellow travelers partook in a Thanksgiving feast of fish and wild game to celebrate.
President George H.W. Bush gave the first official pardon to a turkey in 1989. President Kennedy, in 1963, was the first President to officially spare the turkey.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade didn't get started until 1924, when Macy's employees held a Christmas parade filled with knights, clowns and jugglers. The 6-mile (9.7-kilometer)-long parade attracted a crowd of 250,000 viewers that first year. The first balloon, Felix the Cat, floated above the parade in 1927.
After the Portsmouth Spartans moved to Detroit in 1930, the team's owner knew he had to do something to draw football fans to the new team. In 1934, he arranged a match between the Spartans (renamed the Detroit Lions) and the world champions, the Chicago Bears.
According to Wikipedia Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey as the national bird of the United States and stated as much in a letter he wrote to his daughter Sarah Bache on January 26, 1784.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), which tracks such things, indicates that Minnesota produces 19% of the Turkeys in the U.S. That's more than 46 million birds out of a total U.S. production of more than 248 million. That's a lot of Turkey!