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Thanksgiving: do you know it all?

-Niharika Singh

Thanksgiving is the secular and positive holiday celebrating gratitude towards life or as we  youngsters know it as the festival of lots of good food and shopping sales. It wasn’t always the same with the parades that you see today, the “Black Friday” sales etc. So, I have stirred up some facts about this festival which will definitely make you look smarter on your next Thanksgiving dinner. Let’s roll!!

• How much food is too much food?

On an average 4500 calories are consumed in any Thanksgiving dinner and guess what the much hyped “turkey roast” that you googled tireless before cooking wasn’t even part of the first thanksgiving meal. Supposedly, the first meal included oysters, ducks, goose, lobsters and fish alongside with pumpkins and cranberries; again, no pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce.

• Once upon a time…..

The well-read history of Thanksgiving says that it started as a 3-day harvest festival in 1621 with pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians coming together. BUT WAIT. There is also a section of people that believes that the story is much darker and was actually a feast by governor John Winthrop to celebrate the colonial soldiers who that slaughtered Pequot people. Well, the exact date and reason is still hazy.

• Wasn’t always a holiday

What is now celebrated as now of the biggest American holidays, wasn’t actually a holiday till 1863, when Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of November as the official Thanksgiving holiday; all thanks to the un-tiring efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, who kept writing letters for 17 years to convince the government.