· Did you know that the first thanksgiving took place in December, 1621 when the Pilgrims held a three-day feast in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts to celebrate their bountiful harvest?
· Did you know that Thanksgiving didn’t become an official national holiday until two hundred years later, when in 1863 President Lincoln proclaimed the fourth Thursday of November a national day of thanksgiving?
· Did you know that the most popular Thanksgiving dinner includes a menu of turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie?
Then it’s only fitting that Americans raise over 256 million turkeys. The biggest
producer of turkeys is Minnesota, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas,
Virginia, Missouri and California.
Did you know that U.S. turkey farmers also raised just over 144,000 organic
turkeys in 2005?
· Did you know that Americans raise 649 million ponds of cranberries, 1.6 billion
pounds of sweet potatoes and 998 million pounds of pumpkin?
In addition to domestically grown and raised Thanksgiving food, the U.S. also imports $5.2 million of live turkeys from Canada, $2.2 million worth of cranberries also from Canada and $2.3 million worth of sweet potatoes from Dominican Republic.
· Did you know that there are at least three American towns named after Thanksgiving dinner’s main course?
· There’s Turkey, Texas with 496 residents; Turkey Creek, Louisiana with 357 residents and Turkey, North Carolina with 267 residents. There are also 8 places and townships named Cranberry and 20 places named Plymouth, after the location of the first Thanksgiving.
· Did you know that as many as 107 million American homes will celebrate Thanksgiving this year?
· Did you know that the first National Football League’s Thanksgiving Classic game was played in 1934, when the Lions hosted the game as a gimmick to get people to go to Lion’s football games?
· Did you know that Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving, which is touted as the biggest Christmas shopping day in America – is actually not the biggest shopping day? In fact, the Saturday before Christmas historically has been the largest volume shopping day. Black Friday ranks anywhere from the second to the fifth in Christmas shopping days.
