Thanksgiving Fun Facts

With everyone’s favorite time for filling up on pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce coming up, most of us can say we know Thanksgiving’s history and traditions pretty well. While you prep your turkey, here are some facts you might not have learned in kindergarten:

• About 46 million turkeys are cooked for Thanksgiving each year.
• Sarah Joseph Hale, the woman who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” convinced Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday after writing him letters for 17 years. Lincoln proclaimed it a national holiday on October 3rd, 1863.
• People consume an average of 4,500 calories every Thanksgiving. Wear your sweatpants!
• There are four towns named Turkey: one in Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina.
• Butterball has a turkey-cooking hotline available for questions during the holidays! They answer over 100,000 calls each November and December.
• The very first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was held in 1924 and didn’t actually feature any balloons or giant floats. They did, however, have animals from the Central Park Zoo, puppets, and celebrities (including Santa Claus himself)!
• We know the sitting President pardons a turkey each year, but did you know what these lucky turkeys get to do afterwards? The pardoned turkeys of 2005 and 2009 went on to serve as the grand marshal for Disneyworld’s annual Thanksgiving parades.

​We’re thankful for all we have this year, and we hope you get to enjoy time with friends and family this Thanksgiving!