November 23: Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the USA, a national holiday which is celebrated on the third Thursday of November each year. November 22 is the earliest date Thanksgiving can fall and the latest date is November 28.

1. The first Thanksgiving took place in 1621 when the Pilgrims gathered to give thanks that they'd survived their first year in the New World. It was intended to be a fast, not a feast - they were religious people who believed in fasting and prayer, but the local Wampanoag Indians had other ideas. They showed up with food and the resulting celebrations lasted three days.
2. It was another 200 years before it became a national holiday, and that was thanks to a woman called Sarah Josepha Hale. She believed so strongly that Thanksgiving should be a national holiday that she campaigned for it for seventeen years. Abraham Lincoln agreed with her and declared it a holiday. Sarah Josepha Hale's other claim to fame is that she wrote the song Mary Had a Little Lamb.
3. It's even worse for Turkeys than Christmas. In a survey conducted by the National Turkey Federation, nearly 88 percent of Americans said they eat turkey at Thanksgiving. That's 46 million turkeys and 535 million pounds of meat. It's the top day in the USA for eating turkey. In 1953, however, too many turkeys got the chop and there were 260 tons left over. A salesman came up with the idea of packing it into trays with vegetables. This was the start of the TV dinner.
4. Since 1947 there has always been one turkey which has a lucky escape. President Truman started a tradition in which the President pardons a turkey and that turkey won't get eaten. These turkeys are given names, like May, Flower, or Courage. Courage was pardoned by Barack Obama and went on to star as Grand Marshal of the Disneyland Thanksgiving Day parade.
5. According to historians, they didn't have any turkey at the first Thanksgiving. They would have eaten Venison, ducks, Geese, Oysters, Lobster, Eel and fish. They would have eaten Pumpkins and Cranberries but not pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce. They would have used spoons and knives to eat the meal since forks only arrived in the colonies ten years later.
6. Parades are a regular feature of the day, the most famous being the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which began in 1924 with 400 Macy's employees marching in New York City. About 3 million people attend the annual parade and another 44 million watch it on television. It features large balloons, although in the first parade they had live animals from Central Park Zoo instead. This isn't the oldest parade though. Gimbels department store in Philadelphia staged one in 1920.
7. Not everyone thinks it's such a great thing that the Pilgrims survived. Native Americans hold their own celebrations. On the island of Alcatraz, “Unthanksgiving Day” has been held since 1975 and commemorates the survival of Native Americans after the arrival and settlement of Europeans. Cole’s Hill in Plymouth is the site of another Native American event - a National Day of Mourning. It honours the Native American ancestors who died at the hands of the white settlers and those who still struggle to survive even today.
8. Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day in the US. The American Automobile Association estimated that 42.2 million Americans travelled 50 miles or more over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 2010.
9. The song Jingle Bells was originally written as a Thanksgiving song.
10. The average American will consume about 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day - 3,000 during the main meal and 1,500 in snacks. This is despite the fact a lot of people will be nursing some diabolical hangovers, since the night before Thanksgiving is the biggest drinking night of the year. Yes, even bigger than St Patrick's Day or New Year's Eve.

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