Have you ever wondered why do we feast on turkey on Thanksgiving?Thanksgiving is around the corner and we have people drooling for turkey, mash potato, and pumpkin pie. This festival helps to get us into the holiday season.Thanksgiving is the most awaited holiday season for many. It is a national holiday across the United States, Canada, and other countries or cultures celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 by the people or the pilgrims of the New World for their first harvest. According to folklores in America, the Thanksgiving celebration lasted for three days, which was attended by around 53 pilgrims from Plymouth and around 90 people from the Wampanoag tribe. Since thentThanksgiving has become a tradition where people can stay merry, be thankful for everything they have, and enjoy a belly full of the Thanksgiving feast with their family members and close ones. The colonist William Bradford was the major influencer in organizing the first Thanksgiving where he signed upon the pilgrims of Plymouth and other tribes of Wampanoag to come together and celebrate the first harvest of fall with the Native Americans in the month of November. William Bradford became the governor and settled the colony of Plymouth and Winslow. Traditional Thanksgiving is a national holiday and since the first Thanksgiving, it has become a festival of serving turkey.Turkey on Thanksgiving day is a symbol of national ability to provide wealth. Turkey is a de facto symbol of America’s prowess. Besides, turkey makes for the best fall feast. However, the first thanksgiving in 1621 did not include turkey in their three-day celebration. The Wampanoag tribe brought deer and pilgrims brought wildfowl which could have been turkey but historians believe it to have been duck or goose. Turkey has become the favorite meal for Thanksgiving since 1863 when Abraham Lincoln started the trend. Many Native Americans do not celebrate by eating turkey on Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving at all because it reminds them of the New World because many of their people were killed by the other tribes of pilgrims and Wampanoag. Turkey is also served as the main dish for Thanksgiving celebrations in some parts of Europe. The Thanksgiving feast also includes pumpkin pie with cranberry sauce and few other mixed sauces, venison, and birds. During the traditional Thanksgiving day, the home is decorated and the table is set with a centerpiece with turkey depending on the number of people. The menu includes many other foods including pie with sauce, meat, birds, mash potatoes, and stuffing which is served to the people present on the table. The idea is to have a get-together with family members and friends while eating dishes and dancing to good music.If you liked this article, you can also find other interesting and factual article content such as why do we fall and why do people work.Reasons Why We Eat Turkey On ThanksgivingIt has been believed that the first Thanksgiving was initiated to celebrate the harvest in 1621 by pilgrims and Wampanoag. They brought deer and wildfowl for the celebration which went on for three days. The fowl was considered to be turkey according to history. However, many other historians believe it to have been different types of birds such as ducks or geese. History may have various versions, mentions, and accounts of why people eat turkey at Thanksgiving. One truth cannot be mitigated that turkey became the trend many centuries later, only after Lincoln started the trend of putting turkey on the dinner plate during the feast.Many people believe that since the turkey was served in England, the New World carried on this trend and pilgrims from Plymouth and Winslow included turkey as the main food on the menu. Others believe that turkey is the symbol of national ability to provide wealth and, therefore, shows America’s prowess. One may not be able to figure out the exact reason but hey! aren’t we all happy to have such a tradition where we can have our belly full and feed on this amazing bird on account of Thanksgiving? Well, for many of us, we have to wait until November to really officially celebrate the holiday with turkey but if you cannot wait, you can order your turkey anytime you want. In the words of Edward Winslow in a letter he wrote to a friend in England describing the meal shared by the pilgrims, ’the meal which we rejoice together after the fruits of our labor’.What percentage of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving?In a country like America, around 88-95% of Americans have turkey at their Thanksgiving meal. The other food or meal on the menu includes dishes made of potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, other bird meat, and venison.Around 46 million turkeys are eaten in America on Thanksgiving, which is then followed by 22 million turkeys consumed for Christmas, and 19 million at Easter. The trend of eating turkey which kickstarts in November by Thanksgiving ends at Easter. The consumption of turkey on this day of Thanksgiving is ingrained in American culture to an extent that each year post-1947 a live turkey is gifted to the president of the United States a day prior to the day of Thanksgiving. If we have to explain American Thanksgiving, it is best explained in three words. These are food, family, and football. However, as much as these words are American, the culture of turkey or turkey day has its origin in English culture. It all started when pilgrims of Plymouth and Wampanoag got together for a three-day celebration of the fall harvest and feasted on freshly killed deer, wildfowl, flint, bounty a cod, bass, bread, and bread porridge. As much as turkey is the main dish for Thanksgiving it is yet not synonymous to Thanksgiving. Many people associate turkey to Christians as a holiday meal.How is turkey connected to Thanksgiving?Thanksgiving is a national holiday that has been celebrated by the country for many centuries. It is a day for people and their families to spend together. The idea is to be thankful to God for everything they have been given.This tradition involves feasting on turkey or turkeys, feeding on different meat, birds, and meals including pie, sauce, and potatoes. Turkey is the main meal of the feast and is served as the centerpiece. People take holiday and enjoy it with their loved ones with a belly full of the Thanksgiving meal. The Thanksgiving meal, national turkey meal day, is mostly celebrated in early or late November.Alternatives To Turkey On ThanksgivingThere are a handful of alternatives to turkey on Thanksgiving. If somebody doesn’t like a turkey, they can always choose duck, chicken, geese, deer, or venison. For vegans, they can try out pumpkin pie or other vegan recipes. If history is to be believed, the first Thanksgiving may not have included turkey as the pilgrims and Wampanoag brought deer and wildfowl. Few believe that the fowl was turkey and many historians think it was another bird, like duck or geese. You can also include these side dishes in your menu. Some of the favorite dishes are pumpkin pie with cranberry sauce and a few other mixed sauces, venison, other birds, ham, mash potato, and stuffings. If you do not like turkey, eating on Thanksgiving is not a stressful matter because there are so many other options for you to choose from.Whether you want to believe the old stories of Thanksgiving being framed and modeled in 1621 for the first harvest feast which was celebrated by the English colonists called pilgrims of Plymouth and the Wampanoag tribe or you want to believe in the American prowess story of eating turkey, go ahead enjoy the traditional turkey Thanksgiving dinner. Do you know that turkey is considered to be the centerpiece of the table during Thanksgiving dinner?Yet it is not synonymous to Thanksgiving dinner. Many people actually serve duck and goose instead of turkey and many others consider or relate Christmas holidays with a turkey feast. Whatever your case is, turkey is included in all festivities which start from Thanksgiving in fall and end with Easter in spring. However, it doesn’t matter what you serve or feast upon on Thanksgiving, as long as you spend it with your love and dear ones because that’s all Thanksgiving is about.Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving then why not take a look at why do boats float or why do people dance.
Have you ever wondered why do we feast on turkey on Thanksgiving?
