With the turkey baked and stuffed, the potatoes mashed, the green beans casseroled and the pumpkin pied, all that’s left to do is … eat! So as hungry guests gather around your Thanksgiving table to stuff their bellies, here are 12 fascinating facts about this fowl-themed holiday that are sure to spark conversation – and snuff any attempts to broach less savory topics.
- Thanksgiving is responsible for the creation of the TV dinner. In 1953, someone at Swanson misjudged the number of frozen turkeys it would sell that Thanksgiving – by 260 tons. So someone came up with the idea to slice the meat and repackage with some trimmings on the side – and the first TV dinner was born.
- No Black Friday shopping for plumbers. According to Roto-Rooter, Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for plumbers thanks to all the food we gobble up. Roto-Rooter reports that kitchen drains, garbage disposals and, yes, toilets, require more attention the day after Thanksgiving than any other day of the year.
- What does a turkey say? Gobble, gobble, right? Not exactly. Only male turkeys, called toms, gobble. Females, called hens, cackle.
- Turkey, the national bird. If Ben Franklin had his way, that is. The turkey would’ve been our national bird as he claimed in a letter to his daughter that the eagle had ‘bad moral character’ and that the turkey was a ‘much more respectable bird.’
- Tired? Don’t blame the bird. You feasted, and now you’re feeling sleepy … very sleepy. But don’t blame the turkey’s tryptophan. In fact, chickens have more. The grogginess is from overeating – and digesting all that food requires a lot of energy.
- No one knows if turkey was on the original menu. It’s unclear if colonists and Native Americans ate turkey at their feast. They did, however, indulge in other interesting foods like lobster, seal and swan.
- The woman behind “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is also responsible for Thanksgiving being a national holiday. In 1863, Sarah Josepha Hale convinced President Abraham Lincoln to officially declare Thanksgiving a national holiday, writing countless articles and letters to persuade the president — and by 1864, it was official.
- The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade didn’t have any balloons. But the parade’s debut in 1924 did feature something else of interest: bears, elephants, camels, and monkeys loaned from the Central Park Zoo.
- About 46 MILLION turkeys are cooked for Thanksgiving each year. And most of them come from Minnesota, who produces more turkeys than any other state in the U.S. according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- Presidential turkey pardons give the turkey celebrity. President George H.W. Bush pardoned the first turkey in 1989 – and those pardoned turkeys are sent to Disneyland and Walt Disney World parks to serve as grand marshal in their annual Thanksgiving parades. They also get to ‘vacation’ at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.
- Call for help. The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line answers almost 100,000 calls each season. And last year, the company’s cooking crisis management team added a 24-hour text message line to answer all turkey questions, in addition to their team of Spanish-speakers, their first male Turkey Talk-Line expert, email, live chat, and social media platforms.
- Big Bird is a … turkey? Big Bird’s plumage consists of turkey feathers that have been dyed yellow. The American Plume & Fancy Feather Company is responsible for making the suit, and Big Bird uses feathers from the rear end of a turkey, which are rarely clean. Sesame Street rejects nine out of ten feathers.
So there you have it – twelve of some of the most obscure and fascinating facts about Thanksgiving to keep your table conversation lively, light and entertaining. And from our DeLeon Sheffield Company family to yours, we wish you and your loved ones the very best this Thanksgiving. Happy eating!
