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History of Thanksgiving trivia questions
1. What year was the celebration that is most commonly considered to be the first Thanksgiving?
Reveal answer
1621
This is the celebration that people most often talk about when they are talking about the “first” Thanksgiving. But there are others that are claimed to be the first Thanksgiving. There was another celebration in Plymouth in 1623 and one in Boston in 1631 that people claim was the actual first Thanksgiving. In reality there were lots of Thanksgiving celebrations in North America before 1621 as well, because days of Thanksgiving were often celebrated after good events that were deemed to have the hand of God behind them.
2. How long did the first Thanksgiving celebration last?
Reveal answer
3 days
It was celebrated much earlier than our current celebration, sometime between late September and early November 1621. About 50 English colonists and around 90 Wampanoag men attended the 3-day feast, so the guests outnumbered the Pilgrims almost two to one.
3. When the religious group that would later be known as the Pilgrims left England to practice their religion freely, where did they go?
Reveal answer
Holland (first Amsterdam, then Leiden)
Unlike the Puritans, the Pilgrims believed that they couldn’t practice their religion within the English state church. This led to fines and sometimes imprisonment. To escape persecution, they fled to Holland, first to Amsterdam in 1608 and then to Leiden in 1609. But they had a hard time fitting in and finding jobs because they didn’t want to assimilate into the local culture. They were also worried about their children being influenced by the culture they were living in. So they secured investors and made their journey to found a colony in New England.
4. Under which president did Thanksgiving become an annual holiday?
Reveal answer
Abraham Lincoln
As a nation, the US has celebrated Thanksgiving off and on since 1777, when the Continental Congress called the first national day of thanksgiving. In 1789 George Washington made a proclamation that the American people should celebrate a day of thanksgiving to God on November 26th. Some presidents after him continued the tradition, sporadically declaring days of Thanksgiving. But it wasn’t until 1863 with Lincoln proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November that it became an annual holiday. Presidents proclaimed one every year after that, usually on the last Thursday of November. In 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it up a week to give stores a longer Christmas shopping season, and the country had two Thanksgivings until Congress stepped in. In 1941 Congress made the fourth Thursday of November the law.
Thanksgiving parades trivia
5. In what decade did both the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and America’s Thanksgiving Parade start?
Reveal answer
The 1920s (specifically 1924)
America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit was started by Hudson’s department store. Its display manager, Charles Wendel, borrowed the giant papier-mâché heads from European carnivals, and the first ones were imported from Italy. Macy’s parade in New York started the same year, run by store employees, many of them immigrants who wanted a parade like the ones back home. It was first called the Macy’s Christmas Parade, and it had animals from the Central Park Zoo.
Sources (4)
- Detroit Historical SocietyAmerica’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (opens in a new tab)
- Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State UniversityThe Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit (opens in a new tab)
- Library of CongressMacy’s Thanksgiving Parade (opens in a new tab)
- Newark Public LibraryThanksgiving, a Day Conceived and Celebrated Here in Newark (opens in a new tab)
6. How do both Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and America’s Thanksgiving Parade conclude?
Reveal answer
With the arrival of Santa Claus
In America’s Thanksgiving Parade this usually features Santa receiving the key to the city from the Mayor of Detroit. This is supposed to herald in the Christmas season, but as we all know it’s been creeping earlier and earlier each year.
7. Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving parade is usually called the oldest in the country. What department store started it?
Reveal answer
Gimbels
Yes, the same Gimbels that Macy’s feuds with in Miracle on 34th Street, and that rivalry was real. According to a history of the store, the first parade was about 50 people in 15 cars, with Santa riding in the last one. Gimbels dated it to 1920, four years before Macy’s, though the city’s newspapers show no sign of it before 1925. Later the big finish was Santa, played by a firefighter, climbing a ladder into the store’s eighth-floor toy department. Gimbels closed in 1986, and the parade carries on as the 6abc Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Sources (5)
- City of PhiladelphiaDetails for the 2025 6abc Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade (opens in a new tab)
- The Philadelphia InquirerPhilly Thanksgiving parade was first in U.S. in 1920 (opens in a new tab)
- The Philadelphia InquirerIs Philly’s Thanksgiving Day parade really the oldest in America? (opens in a new tab)
- The New RepublicMiracle on 34th Street (June 2, 1947) (opens in a new tab)
- Turner Classic MoviesTrivia, Miracle on 34th Street (opens in a new tab)
Turkey trivia questions
8. Which president was the first to formally give a turkey a presidential pardon?
Reveal answer
George H. W. Bush
John F. Kennedy was the first president on record to spare a turkey, in 1963, when he said, “We’ll just let this one grow.” Ronald Reagan was the first president to use the word pardon, in 1987, but only as a joke while reporters were asking him about pardons in the Iran-Contra scandal. Bush made it official in 1989, and every president since has carried on the tradition. And no, it wasn’t Harry Truman. The Truman Library found no record of him pardoning a turkey, and he told reporters his turkeys were headed for the dinner table.
9. What are turkey chicks called?
Reveal answer
Poults
Sadly, not turkeylings, which would be an amazing name for baby turkeys. Female turkeys are called hens, and males are called toms or gobblers. The teenagers get their own names too. A young male is a jake and a young female is a jenny.
10. What is the wobbly red piece of flesh on top of the beak of a turkey?
Reveal answer
A snood
The red bit of flesh under the beak is called a wattle. We are definitely not helping the turkey’s reputation as a silly animal with all these names.
11. What are most turkey feathers used for after the turkey is plucked?
Reveal answer
Animal feed
Feathers from birds like turkeys and chickens are cooked under steam and pressure, then ground up and used as protein in animal feed, mostly for cattle and other ruminants. Feathers are made of keratin, a tough protein animals can’t get much out of until the steam breaks it down. And there are plenty to go around. By one USDA estimate, the U.S. poultry industry produces about 4 billion pounds of feathers a year.
12. What state raises the most turkeys?
Reveal answer
Minnesota
Minnesota raised 33.5 million turkeys in 2025, and the USDA expects about 34 million in 2026. Next up is North Carolina with 28 million, then Arkansas with 21.5 million. But North Carolina grows bigger birds. In 2025 it produced about 1.09 billion pounds of turkey to Minnesota’s 972 million.
Thanksgiving food trivia questions
13. What meat did the Native Americans bring to the first Thanksgiving?
Reveal answer
Deer (venison)
After they arrived, some of the Native Americans went out hunting and brought back five deer to give to the governor, the captain, and others.
14. In the spring of 1621, Squanto went fishing and came back with a haul he caught without a hook, net or spear. He trod them out with his feet and grabbed them with his hands. What slippery fish were they?
Reveal answer
Eels
The Pilgrims wrote it down in Mourt’s Relation: he came home “with as many as he could well lift in one hand,” and they were “fat and sweet.” Eels were a regular Wampanoag food. In the same December 1621 letter that describes the first Thanksgiving, Edward Winslow bragged that in September they could catch a hogshead (a big barrel) of eels in a night. You won’t find many eels on a Thanksgiving table today, though.
15. What decade was the green bean casserole, a Thanksgiving staple in many households, first created?
Reveal answer
1950s (specifically 1955)
The green bean casserole was created by the Campbell Soup Company and more specifically by Dorcas Reilly. Her original recipe card was donated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002.
16. In what century did pumpkin pie as we know it, a custard filling baked in a crust, first show up in an American cookbook?
Reveal answer
The 18th century (1796)
Although the pumpkin is native to North America, pumpkin pies were being baked in England in the 1600s. Those were very different, though. They were slices of pumpkin, sometimes fried, layered with apples, sugar and spices between two crusts. The custard version showed up in 1796 in Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, the first cookbook written by an American and published in America. She called it “pompkin pudding,” even though it was baked in a crust.
17. What culture produced the idea of the cornucopia, the horn of plenty?
Reveal answer
Greek culture
The cornucopia is very prevalent in Greek mythology. With one origin story having baby Zeus breaking off a horn from a divine goat that was suckling him. Another origin story has Heracles ripping off the horn of a river god named Achelous. The cornucopia then became associated with several Greek and Roman deities.
Thanksgiving and harvest festival traditions around the world
18. Thanksgiving in the USA is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, but when is Canada’s Thanksgiving?
Reveal answer
The second Monday of October
Canadian Thanksgiving shares many aspects of American Thanksgiving, right down to the turkey. Canadians often trace it back to 1578, when Martin Frobisher and his crew gave thanks for surviving the voyage from England, or to 1606, when Samuel de Champlain started the Order of Good Cheer, a run of feasts to keep the French settlers at Port-Royal going through the winter. The second Monday of October only became the official date in 1957.
19. During Chuseok, Korea’s harvest festival, families eat a stuffed food, but it isn’t turkey. What is it?
Reveal answer
Rice cakes (songpyeon)
Rice is ground down into a flour and then water is added to make a rice dough. Then that dough is stuffed with lots of different types of ingredients and formed into small rice cakes which then are steamed over pine needles.
Image source and more info at the Songpyeon page on Wikipedia
20. Where is the only place in Australia where Thanksgiving is a public holiday?
Reveal answer
Norfolk Island
The custom was brought there by American whaling ships and it just kind of stuck. Islanders get the last Wednesday of November off for it. The rest of Australia doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Sources (4)
- NPRHow a South Pacific island celebrates Thanksgiving (opens in a new tab)
- SBS FoodHomegrown, Norfolk Island (opens in a new tab)
- ABC Religion & EthicsWhat Australia needs is a national day of thanksgiving (opens in a new tab)
- Federal Register of LegislationNorfolk Island Continued Laws Amendment (Public Holidays)… (opens in a new tab)
21. Around Labor Thanksgiving Day, who do lots of Japanese preschoolers give drawings and thank-you cards to?
Reveal answer
The police
Kindergartners and young schoolkids often bring drawings and handmade cards to the nearest police station to thank the officers for their work. Fire stations get some too, so we’ll take firefighters. Labor Thanksgiving Day was established in 1948, after World War II, to celebrate hard work and giving thanks to each other. But its roots are much older. It comes from Niinamesai, an ancient harvest festival in which the emperor offers the year’s newly harvested grain to the gods, and shrines still hold it today.
Sources (4)
- Stars and Stripes OkinawaHoliday gives thanks to workers in Japan on Nov. 23 (opens in a new tab)
- Kanagawa Prefectural Police, Asahi stationcommunity notes (Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
- City of Sapporo, Kita Fire StationLabor Thanksgiving Day cheers from preschoolers (Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
- Nippon.comLabor Thanksgiving Day (Japan’s National Holidays) (opens in a new tab)
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