Thanksgiving is a day of food, football, and family time. People usually think of Thanksgiving as a day to spend time with their family, watch some football or a parade, share thanks, and most of all, eat. However, most people don’t know how the first Thanksgiving ‘really went down.’

The Menu

First and foremost, the first Thanksgiving lasted over a period of 3 days in 1621, almost 400 years ago. The food we feast on today is much different than what was on the table at the first Thanksgiving. At the top of the menu was deer, along with waterfowl, fish, shellfish, and beans. The Wampanoag also shared their gardening skills with the pilgrims and aided them in growing nuts and vegetables such as garlic, carrots, and onions.

Friend or Foe?

While most people celebrate Thanksgiving as a day of thanks, some descendants of the Wampanoag choose to celebrate the holiday as a day of mourning due to the decolonization of their peoples around this time. Some descendants do celebrate Thanksgiving with thanks, but they do so without the Pilgrims in mind. In the following generation, the two groups became sole enemies in war.

As the majority of the Native American population died of “Indian Fever,” King Phillip was executing his own plans- he executed several of his men for the murder of John Sassamon, a Christian convert of the Native American peoples. This angered the Wampanoag, and they responded by raiding New England, thus sparking the beginning of the war in 1675. Colonists were abducted by the Wampanoag and nearly six-hundred Narragansetts (another tribe involved in the war) were killed in cold blood. The tribes involved in the war were forced to leave their villages. After King Phillip’s attempt to recruit allies in New York, he was attacked by the Mohawks and killed in the final battle at Mount Hope. Any remaining allies were either killed or sold into slavery, and King Phillip’s head was displayed on a spike for 25 years following the war. Professor Robert E. Cray Jr. declared that the death toll could’ve been as high as 30% of the New England population and just over half of the Native American population at that time.

Feasts and Football

You can’t have Thanksgiving without football. The first known American football game to have been on Thanksgiving was in 1876, a few years after the game was first invented. Princeton and Yale’s college football teams began an annual tradition of playing each other on Thanksgiving, and Michigan and the Chicago Maroons were also known to partake in a friendly game of football. The first NFL game on Thanksgiving dates back to 1920.

The Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears played in 1934, and the Lions have been considered a ‘Thanksgiving Staple’ since then. The cowboys joined the tradition in 1966 when they played and defeated the Cleveland Browns.

The Macy’s March

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become one of the largest parades in America today, attracting roughly 3.5 million people to New York City and 50 million more to their televisions at home.

The first parade took place in 1924 and was on Christmas rather than Thanksgiving. Macy’s employees dressed up in classic costumes such as cowboys and clowns, and they even had animals from the Central Park Zoo parading down the route behind them. Macy’s was hoping to draw attention to the store in NYC, and over 250,000 people attended which was considered a success. It was then decided that the parade would be an annual event. The parade grew in size over the years and is now one of the biggest holiday events in the nation.

The Takeaway

Thanksgiving is a holiday known for family feasts, parade floats, and football, but most people don’t know the origin of these traditions or even what the first Thanksgiving was like. Not only is it interesting, but it’s important to understand the traditions we have on Thanksgiving today. Now, all you have to do is impress your family at the dinner table as you spit out facts on ‘The First Thanksgiving!’