Be The Smartest Person At The Thanksgiving Table

Happy Thanksgiving from The Influencer and Oxford Road!

Amidst all of the havoc 2020 has wrought, this week, we persist in giving thanks. To the loyal Influencer readers, thank you! We hope that this newsletter brings you a weekly dose of knowledge, insights, a chuckle now and then, and that our podcast has brought a sense of balance in these divisive times. Despite this year’s challenges, the very fact that you’re able to read an email magically beamed through a collection of supercomputers into your home and eyes to read it is reason enough to say “thank you” for something! So while this year’s Thanksgiving feast may look a bit different than it has in years past, this week, The Influencer is giving you an insider’s tip on Thanksgiving trivia that will make you the smartest person at the table, virtually or otherwise. Learn what was really on the first Thanksgiving dinner, what Mary Had A Little Lamb has to do the holiday, which president hated Thanksgiving, and more by clicking below…

-Kyle

The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

This year, the famous parade will look a bit different than usual but the origins of this pastime are a stroke of marketing genius. To celebrate the expansion of its Herald Square superstore in 1924, Macy’s announced its very first “Big Christmas Parade”, promising “magnificent floats”, bands and an “animal circus.” A huge success, Macy’s signed a TV contract with NBC to broadcast the now-famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every year since. The first oversized balloons debuted in 1927 and were the brainchild of Anthony Frederick Sarg, a German-born puppeteer and theatrical designer who also created Macy’s fantastical Christmas window displays. The first balloons were filled with oxygen, not helium, and featured Felix the Cat and inflated animals like elephants, tigers, and a giant hummingbird.

What Was Really on the First Thanksgiving Menu?

Turkey was not on the table, and neither was most everything else you’re craving. Although turkeys were indigenous to the area, there’s no record of a big, roasted bird at the first feast. The Wampanoag brought deer, and there would have been lots of local seafood (mussels, lobster, bass) plus the fruits of the first pilgrim harvest, including pumpkin. No mashed potatoes, no cranberries (see below), and definitely no stuffing — sorry Grandma!

What About the Cranberries?

Not the ‘90’s band. Cranberries were eaten by Native Americans and used as a potent red dye, but sweetened cranberry relish was almost certainly not on the first Thanksgiving table. The pilgrims had long exhausted their sugar supply by November 1621. It wasn’t until 1912 when Marcus Urann canned the first jellied cranberry sauce, eventually founding the cranberry growers cooperative known as Ocean Spray.

Which President Refused to Recognize Thanksgiving?

Thomas Jefferson was famously the only Founding Father and early president who refused to declare days of thanksgiving and fasting in the United States. Unlike his political rivals, the Federalists, Jefferson believed in “a wall of separation between Church and State”, and that endorsing such celebrations as president would amount to state-sponsored religious worship.

What does “Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ Have To Do With Thanksgiving?

The proclamation of the first official Thanksgiving by Abraham Lincoln was partially the result of years of impassioned lobbying by “Mary Had a Little Lamb” author and abolitionist Sarah Josepha Hale.

How A Botched Thanksgiving Order Created TV Dinners

Busy parents everywhere have Thanksgiving to thank for these microwavable lifesavers. In 1953, an employee at C.A. Swanson & Sons overestimated demand for Thanksgiving turkey and the company was left with some 260 tons of extra frozen birds. As a solution, a Swanson salesman ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, devised a turkey meal, and recruited an assembly line of workers to compile what would become the first TV tray dinners. A culinary hit was born. In the first full year of production in 1954, the company sold 10 million turkey TV tray dinners.

What Does Football Have To Do With Thanksgiving Anyway?

The winning combo of football and Thanksgiving kicked off way before there was anything called the NFL. The first Thanksgiving football game was between Yale and Princeton in 1876, only 13 years after Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday. Soon after, Thanksgiving was picked for the date of the college football championships. By the 1890s, thousands of college and high school football rivalries were played every Thanksgiving.

Why Do Presidents Pardon Turkeys?

This year, Trump will pardon Corn and Cobb as part of a longstanding tradition of sparing the lives of two turkeys each Thanksgiving. Starting in the 1940s, farmers would gift the President with some plump birds for roast turkey over the holidays, which the first family would invariably eat. While President John F. Kennedy was the first American president to spare a turkey’s life (“We’ll just let this one grow,” JFK quipped in 1963. “It’s our Thanksgiving present to him.”), the annual White House tradition of “pardoning” a turkey officially started with George H.W. Bush in 1989.

Which President Tried To Move the Date of Thanksgiving?

Concerned that the Christmas shopping season was cut short by a late Thanksgiving, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decreed in 1939 that the holiday would be celebrated a week earlier. “Franksgiving,” as it was known, was decried by Thanksgiving traditionalists and political rivals (one even compared FDR to Hitler) and was only adopted by 23 of the 48 states. Congress officially moved Thanksgiving back to the fourth Thursday of November in 1941, where it has remained ever since.

Wherever this year’s Thanksgiving finds you, if you’re reading this, thank you. While it may be a bit more difficult to find the reasons to be thankful this year, hopefully, you don’t have to dig too deep. For a more in-depth look at the information provided above with pictures and video, check out The History Channel’s breakdown of Thanksgiving HERE.