(Image: ‘The First Thanksgiving’ by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris)
On the fourth Thursday of November (or the second Monday of October in Canada), many Americans will be cooking one of the biggest meals of the year, and more still will be heading out to meet friends and family for turkey and pumpkin pie. The official tradition behind Thanksgiving is that it’s a time to remember those that first came and settled in the New World from Europe, and the tenuous partnership they developed with the people already living there. It’s a time for friends and family, and a time to give thanks. And on the off chance you need some light dinner table conversation, we did some digging for fun Thanksgiving facts that you might not know about.
Why Cranberries?
(Image: Liz West)
Cranberries are a key part of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, and there’s a good reason why. According to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association, it’s one of only three fruits (the others being the Concord grape and the blueberry) that were originally native to North America. And more than that, they were America’s original superfood.
Even today, we’re still looking for that one food that will lower cholesterol, help us lose weight and build up our immune systems – the superfood. Native American tribes in the northeastern part of the United States discovered it generations ago. The fruit that the Pilgrims called the cranberry was also known as “ibimi” or “sassamenesh”, and were used for just about anything you can think of. They were eaten fresh or dried, brewed into tea, or made into cakes. Some even smoked the cranberry. Others boiled them to use as dye and as bait in rabbit traps.
They were medicinal, too, long before the term “antioxidant” was coined. Cranberries were used as laxatives, for reducing fever, for treating gastrointestinal distress and complications in childbirth. National Geographic calls a popular cranberry-based food the “Original Energy Bar”, packed in bulk for long journeys. The bar, called pemmican, was made from cranberries, dried deer meat and tallow fat, which was preserved and stored in skin pouches.
Many of the old medicinal uses for the cranberry were lost when the settlers started preparing it in more European ways, a process made possible by the introduction of honeybees that made the fruit sweeter.
The Puppeteer of the Macy’s Day Parade
(Image: Nellies)
Thanksgiving Day wouldn’t be complete without the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, made into something iconic because of the massive balloons that float through the city streets. Those balloons started out as puppets, and were the brainchild of a German immigrant named Anthony Sarg.
First filled with oxygen, they were propped up and carried along by teams of puppeteers during their first appearance in 1927. Sarg was also responsible for creating the window displays that lined the streets, and in 1928 his puppets were filled with helium and became the forerunners to the balloons we know today.
Originally, the balloons were released at the end of the Day Parade, and a reward was offered to anyone who returned one to Macy’s. If it seems that there may have been some problems with that idea, there were. The Smithsonian reports how more than one pilot thought it a great idea to try to catch the balloons with their planes. The end of the tradition swiftly followed.
Sarg’s creations also found life elsewhere. In 1937, residents of Nantucket reported seeing a giant sea creature swimming across the Sound, and when fishermen found what they thought were footprints matching the creature, they thought they had a monster on their hands. Until, that is, the cryptid was revealed to be one of Sarg’s balloons. N Magazine featured photos of the balloon sitting on the Nantucket sands, children playing in its shadow.
Why a Turkey’s Called a Turkey
(Image: Thanksgiving Turkey)
There’s the bird, and then there’s the country. When you think about it, that might seem a bit odd, considering the bird is only native to North America. But Treehugger explains why a turkey is called a turkey – and it turns out the bird and the country are connected after all.
Back in the day, merchants from the Far East would bring their products to Constantinople to be sold on to other merchants from Europe. Those buyers, rather than designating the goods based on their country of origin, just started referring to items as being “Turkish”. One of those items was the guinea fowl, a turkey-like bird imported to Turkey from Africa and considered hugely popular in Europe.
Merchants – and ultimately, customers – started calling the bird the “Turkey cock” rather than it’s proper name, and when those customers headed to the New World, they found a bird that bore a striking resemblance to the Turkey cocks from back home. Hence, the North American bird became the turkey cock, too, with the name ultimately shortened to just “turkey”.
It’s more complicated than that, though. When turkeys were imported to Portugal they were called “peru”, because that’s where they were thought to have come from. And what are they called in Turkey? They’re called “hindi”, which means “bird from India” – incidentally, where Columbus thought he was going all those years ago.
The Real Menu at the First Thanksgiving
(Image: Jennie Augusta Brownscombe)
Chances are, if you celebrate Thanksgiving, you have some dinnertime staples and some favourite family recipes. But how accurate is the menu when it comes to paying homage to our ancestors? According to Smithsonian, only two sources actually make any reference to what was eaten at the 1621 feast at Plymouth Colony. One is a letter written by Edward Winslow, the other a piece written by the governor William Bradford. And what we know is pretty sparse: there was deer, waterfowl, turkey and corn.
It’d be a pretty sad table, but Plymouth historians have delved deeper to try and establish what exactly would have been served, and how it would have been prepared.
Passenger pigeons were a likely dish. Though there haven’t been any in the wilds of North America for around 100 years, it was once written that there were so many pigeons that shots fired at a flock in flight could bring down 200 birds at a time. They were likely spit-roasted, and the larger birds – like turkeys – boiled. There was likely stuffing, too, but not stuffing as we make it today. Early birds would have been stuffed with a corn-based concoction, and other dishes probably included the likes of chestnuts, eels and shellfish.
That first Thanksgiving wasn’t a one-day affair, either. The feast lasted three days, which probably meant that the leftovers from the first day were re-boiled and reheated for the following days – starting another time-honoured tradition.
Turkey Doesn’t Make You Sleepy
(Image: The Kohser)
If Thanksgiving Day starts with the Macy’s Parade and a ton of cooking, we all know that it ends with a nap. Chances are that you’ve heard it’s the tryptophan-packed turkey that causes the afternoon sleepiness, but that’s not exactly true.
The science is a little weird, explains Scientific American. Turkey does contain the essential amino acid tryptophan, but in no higher quantity than that found in other kinds of meat. And it’s used in the creation of serotonin, which has been associated with a drowsy feeling. Seems to point to a guilty verdict for the turkey?
Not quite. In order for turkey to send you to sleep, tryptophan has to not only make serotonin, but then cross the blood-brain barrier. Tryptophan is only one of a number of different amino acids that start circulating in the bloodstream after a big turkey dinner, and it’s in a relatively small quantity compared to the others that are shuffling their way into the brain. So what is it that’s making us sleepy? Dessert.
Chowing down on pie, whipped cream and other desserts after a big meal causes the body’s insulin production to spike. Insulin doesn’t have much impact on tryptophan, but it does deplete other amino acids in the blood. That means that in the shuffle to cross the blood-brain barrier, the insulin that’s just taken out tryphtophan’s competition is the real cause of Thanksgiving drowsiness. Add in the likelihood that you’ve just eaten a huge amount of food, and everyone’s going to be snoozing on the sofa.
Why There’s Always Room for Pie
(Image: US Department of Agriculture)
We know how Thanksgiving goes – you eat and eat and eat some more, until you swear that you couldn’t possibly eat another bite. That’s until the pie comes out and you just can’t say no, despite that sneaking suspicion that eating even more is the worst decision you’re going to make all day.
So why is there always room for pie? According to Smithsonian scientists, you’re correct in the knowledge that there’s always room for more. Appetite is generally governed by a pair of hormones: ghrelin is produced in the stomach and tells you when you’re hungry, while leptin is in your tissues, and tells you when to stop eating. In theory, at least; but when it comes to sweet things, your ghrelin will almost certainly double cross you.
Research from Carleton University in Canada revealed a disconnect between ghrelin and the brain’s receptors when rats were presented with something sweet to gnaw on. Two groups of rats were tested: one with normal gherlin levels, the other from a specific strain of rat that was missing the brain’s necessary receptors. When the well-fed rats were presented with a special, sugary treat of cookie dough, the standard rats ate considerably more sweets.
The results suggest something of a bypass when we’re presented with something sweet, suggesting that no matter how satiated we may be, there’s always room for pie.
Turkeys Almost Went Extinct
(Image: Hatmatbbat10)
Imagine Thanksgiving without a turkey, and you’re imaging a future that very nearly happened. While most of the turkeys that make it to the dinner table today are farm-raised, they weren’t always. Wild turkeys were, for generations, seen as something of a free meal. They were hunted in massive numbers by European settlers, and remained an incredibly popular food throughout America’s history.
National Geographic says that turkeys numbered in their millions when settlers landed in the New World. But by 1851, they were extinct in Massachusetts, and in 1907, they’d been wiped out in Iowa too. As land was developed their habitat was destroyed, and as America’s population grew, more families relied on hunting turkeys to put food on the table. By the 1930s, only about 30,000 wild turkeys remained, all in areas that were relatively inaccessibility to humans.
It wasn’t until the Great Depression that turkeys made a comeback, when farmers turned their backs on their struggling farms and headed into the cities. Even so, by World War Two conservationists knew there was still a problem and tried releasing farm-hatched turkeys into the wild. The experiment was an epic failure, as none of the birds had developed survival skills. It was only in 1951 that biologists found a way to capture wild turkeys and re-introduce them to other areas, slowly repopulating regions that were once full of them.
So successful were their efforts that turkeys went on to significantly expand their range, and today, the US enjoys more Thanksgiving birds than ever before.
The Hallucinogenic on the Table
(Image: Dominikmatus)
Part of the appeal of the holiday season is the emergence of some traditional favourites. It’s the pumpkin pie and the eggnog, the cinnamon and gingerbread. Spices have always had a huge impact on our food, and one of Thanksgiving’s most important spices has a strange double life.
Nutmeg is authentically Thanksgiving – the Pilgrims not only used it, but treated it as something special. There were specially designated grinders just for nutmeg, and if you were of a certain social standing, you used it all the time. Holland and England fought wars for control of nutmeg-producing islands. The popular spice is also a hallucinogenic.
In conjunction with the Florida Poison Control Information Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, ABC News explained why nutmeg caused such a response. The spice contains a chemical called myristicin which, when ingested in a large enough quantity, can cause an LSD-like, hallucinogenic high that can last up to several days.
Most people are dissuaded from trying to get high on nutmeg because of the side effects that go along with the buzz. It starts with fierce gastrointestinal distress, and continues with heart and nerve problems, made worse if the person already has a preexisting condition. There’s also the potential for seizures, permanent damage to the cardiac system, and death that results from a combination of what’s essentially a bad trip and an overloaded nervous system.
In the early 1900s, getting high on nutmeg was serious problem. It was big in the 1960s, too, even occasionally used by Hunter S. Thompson. Nowadays, most overdoses are accidental, but officials still warn that parents in particular should be aware of the possible dangers.
The Journey of the Pardoned Turkeys
(Image: Lawrence Jackson)
Another Thanksgiving Day tradition is the presidential pardoning of the National Thanksgiving Turkey, and its alternate bird. According to the Smithsonian, there’s more to the tradition than just uttering a few words and saving a few lives.
The tradition officially began in 1989, but it’s thought that the idea dates back much further than that. When JFK announced that he wasn’t going to eat a turkey given to him by the California Turkey Advisory, the newspapers announced that he had awarded the bird a pardon. It was George H. W. Bush that made the first official pardon in 1989, but turkeys have been spared by the president since the days of Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was given a Christmas turkey, 8-year-old Tad Lincoln adopted the turkey as a pet, called him Jack, and started leading the bird around the White House. When it came time to slaughter the bird for dinner, Tad protested and his father relented. The elder Lincoln wrote up an official reprieve for Jack, who remained a White House pet.
Today, pardoned turkeys are given luxury treatment. After they’re selected and before they’re taken to a Virginia farm to live out the rest of their days, they spend the night in a $350 per night suite at Washington, DC’s opulent Willard InterContinental Hotel.
Our Ancestors had Little to Give Thanks For
(Image: Paul K)
At its heart, Thanksgiving is about being grateful for all that you have. But in some regards it’s a rather strange way to pay homage to those who settled in the New World, as letters and journals suggest they had little to be grateful for.
At the same time as the settlers of New England were sitting down to a feast, conditions were grim just a stone’s throw to the south. Letters penned by an indentured servant living in the Carolinas lamented that since getting off the ship he’d had nothing to eat but peas and water gruel. There was no venison to be found and rare birds were reserved for the elite. He writes that people would have given a limb to be allowed to go back to England, even if it meant they became beggars going from door to door.
Smithsonian reports that few documents survive from that time. Most people arriving in America were illiterate, but the few letters we do have paint a grim picture of starvation, disease and of working themselves to death. Indentured servants were often promised land once they worked off their debts – though only about seven percent ultimately claimed their property.
What did survive, however, were folk songs passed down through oral tradition. The genre? Smithsonian calls them the “murder and hard luck ballads”. With that in mind, may we wish you a happy Thanksgiving!
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