November 27, 2008 • 20 mins
Thanksgiving is an unusual holiday in America -- there's no religious connotation, and the only traditions are a good meal and a sense of appreciation for the good things in life. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thanksgiving.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuffworks dot com. Welcome to the podcast. This
is Josh. There's Chuck. That's right, that's our best turkey. Yeah,
that was not a turkey. I believe that was the
(00:22):
signal U the police are coming to Owen Wilson Houston
bottle rocket. That's right. Nice? Sorry, nice hipster reference, Chuck?
Is it? I thought that made me a big nerd. No, No,
that's it was a cool movie and everybody should know
about it. Um So turkeys turkeys, Yes, let's I'm not
saying it. Say it. No, let's talk turkey. Okay, so
(00:45):
we are talking turkey. Um it's almost Thanksgiving and I'm
I'm getting a little hungry. Yeah, it's my favorite holiday. Yeah?
Is it really? That's weird? Is it? Yeah? What's yours?
Harbor Day? Flying Day? No? Really? Thanksgivings your favorite holiday? Why? Well?
(01:08):
I enjoyed the rituals of the football. I like the meal.
I like the sentiment behind it, giving thanks and being thankful.
What about presents? You get no presents on Thanksgiving? My
present is being off work for a few days and
laying around and drinking. Uh, that is the gift that
(01:28):
keeps on giving. That's great. I had no idea, Chucking
and fantastic. You were the first person I've ever met
whose favorite holidays Thanksgiving. That's cool, Get out more. My
collection is growing more replete. What's your favorite holiday though? Christmas? Really?
Oh yeah, I like Christmas too, But there's a whole,
you know, shopping thing and the greed of the companies,
(01:49):
it's all. It taints it a bit, in my opinion.
The greed is only it only goes as far as
you let it. You know, if you buy somebody at
present you think is appropriate and not too excessive, they're
not gonna like shove it back in your face. And
so you take this back and double what you paid
for it. Right. I just mean more along the lines
of the consumerism as a whole, I understand. But yeah,
(02:09):
I'm not. I'm off my soapbox. Well let's let's get
back to Chuck's favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. And um, actually everything
you know about Thanksgiving is wrong me, everybody, everybody, most
people right, well, actually I shouldn't say most things. You know,
those elementary school pageants that. You know, a lot of
us are gonna be forced to go watch this season
sure or have seen already. Scarily enough, those are actually
(02:33):
fairly accurate as far as the uh, the Pilgrims and
the Native Americans sitting down together. Yeah, that is very
much the bare bones of the story, right. The wardrobe
is off. Apparently no buckles. Pilgrims didn't wear the they
don't look like the Quaker road sky or they apparently
they only wore black and white on Sunday. And the
buckles again didn't come into fashion until about fifty or
(02:56):
sixty years later, much later. Yeah, um, so the buckles.
You you almost never saw a um you know, the
cartoon turkeys dressed like a pilgrim. Very rarely did you
see that in North America in the seventeenth century. Um,
I've been working on that one. It gets no laughs. Ever,
you want to repeat it, we'll move on. It might
be funny at the second time. So, yeah, there was
(03:18):
there was a guy named Squantu, There were Puritans, settlers, ok,
the Pilgrims, and they did sit down for a feast,
and they landed on Plymouth Rock. Yeah, there was a
lot more to the story, though, all right, so you
want me to give you a little background here, Okay.
So basically the Puritans, and it wasn't just the Puritans
who settled Plymouth. Um, there was actually another group called
(03:40):
the Strangers who thought the Puritans were complete religious wackos. Oh. Yeah,
they did not really get along very well. Um, but
they were all in it together. They called themselves the Strangers.
Uh no, I think the Puritans called them the Strangers. Yeah.
A lot of them were Catholic. Yeah. Um, so they
(04:00):
all they were all in it together because they were
all in deep, really really big trouble. When they landed,
it was November, so they showed up just in time
for a harsh northeastern winter. Um. And in the first
four months, forty eight of the first of the original
hundred people died. We're talking dying of exposure, of starvation,
(04:21):
like horrible ways to die. And the people who survived
the winner weren't much better off than the ones who died.
They still had no idea what they were doing, Like
they brought some types of grain with them that wouldn't
grow in North America. Um, I didn't know what they
were getting into it all. No, No, they wouldn't have said, hey,
let's land in Massachusetts in November. I bet it's nice exactly. Um,
(04:43):
So there was one big stroke of luck that would
actually prove to be enormous luck. Um. They found a
deserted um wapa noag settlement called Pawtucket. Pawtucket actually a
band in his bad word, it's um. Actually it was
deserted because pretty much the entire population had been decimated
(05:05):
by smallpox, which was courtesy of um English explorers and
traders who had come through and said, hey, and here's
some smallpox. So um it was. It was abandoned. It
was deserted. There's no one living there, basically just bones
laying around, but the structures were still there. So the
pilgrims move into this village. It just so happens that
(05:25):
a guy named Squanto had grown That was his home village,
that's where he'd grown up. But he wasn't there when
the smallpox hit, or else he would have likely died
with everybody else. He was actually in England. There was
a depending on who you ask, he was either sponsored
by an English trader and sent to England to be educated,
or he was shipped to England as a slave which
(05:48):
a lot of people don't know this, but the Puritans
actually helped set off the slave trade in North America
before we visited Africa. We used Native Americans as slaves,
and we shipped him back to England commonly um. Either way,
Squanto was educated in England and he'd been away from
several years. He comes home to his home village to
(06:08):
find a bunch of white people squatting there. But it
just so happens that the group of white people are
starving around the verge of death, and all of a sudden,
one of the handful of Native Americans who can speak
English in in on the North American continent at that time,
show up out of the wilderness and says, let me help.
(06:29):
That's crazy how it worked out like that, Well, you
can imagine the Puritans viewed this as they viewed Squanto
as being sent by God, which actually ended up justifying
centuries of you know, genocide and all that, um, because
we were meant to be here clearly, And you kind
of have to wonder that if um Squanto had been
given a flash of the future, would he have helped
(06:52):
you know, I mean, sure we have internet and mental cigarettes,
but at what cost? You know, it makes you wonder
if he would have just kind of walked away back
into the woods like good luck, those fifty may have
died and uh changed the course of you know, American
history for revocably. Yeah. So, um he helps him. He
basically teaches the Puritans how to survive in North America,
(07:16):
how to farm, what to grow get corn, corn big
one huge, which we both know is enormous. And um,
let's see how to hunt deer, how to harvest shellfish, um,
and that from maple trees. So he he, he saves
this group of people. And UM it is true that
(07:38):
out of respect for his help, and by this time
Squanto had been adopted by or absorbed into a nearby
Wapanoag tribe. UM, so out of gratitude, they invited Squanto
and his family for a celebratory feast, which was the
first Thanksgiving exactly. And that's the one that you'll see
(07:59):
in elementary schools around the country this November. And UH
historians think that um it actually did take place in
the fall, so that that much is on part. It's
not probably not what in the fourth Thursday and Thanksgiving.
And I doubt if they watched the New football or
maybe they did sports were involved. Yeah, uh, and they
said they probably based the the dinner on the Native
(08:23):
American meal plan, which I did a little research into that.
And if you want to honor your our Native American
friends here and this Thanksgiving, then you can sit down
and have a traditional Native American meal of a bean soups,
fried mash nice not quite sure what that is. I think, uh,
(08:44):
smushed corn with public milk, and it sounds good. You
can roast yourself a rabbit and uh chow down on
some mutton stew and a little sheep's head and I
would eat all that. I would try. Sheep's head I
never have, but I would happily eat all the rest
of it. Yeah, and that that would be a traditional
or you know those foods are traditional Native American foods. Yeah,
there was, there's one. And and like Chuck said, the
(09:07):
this this much more, this first Thanksgiving much more followed
the Native Americans tradition of Thanksgiving. Um. Had it followed
the Puritans version of Thanksgiving, there would have been a
lot of um praying and not dancing and basically just
standing around being very solemn um. And the Puritans had
days of Thanksgiving like crazy. Um, the Native Americans in
(09:29):
the northeast, the Algonquin speaking people's they celebrated six times
a year, and one of them was the harvest, which
is actually found world round. Yeah, the bunch of ancient
cultures and recent cultures celebrated harvest Thanksgiving. Yeah, so um,
that's that's actually kind of what we do today. We
still kind of celebrated a little more like the the
(09:51):
Indian version than the Puritan version. So um, that's the
story of the First Thanksgiving and basically it led to
I've read I've read analysis on it, and people speculate
that the Puritans were grateful, but at the same time
(10:12):
they did see Squanto sent by God like he had
no choice in it. And ultimately they were kind of
getting along because they were about the only English in
the area and that they were vastly outnumbered by the
Native Americans. Well, within twenty years, the children of both
of these groups who were seated at the First Thanksgiving
dinner were murdering one another in King Philip's War, And
(10:36):
that was the beginning of that. Right, So let's flash
forward a little bit show to the official Thanksgivings. Yeah,
the way we recognize that right, Well, if you're talking
about officially recognized George Washington started at, Yeah, that's the
sporadic Thanksgiving celebrations that marked actually, sadly, a lot of
(10:56):
them marked um victories over Native trial vibes. Um, and
considering how things got started, it's that's quite a kick
in the face. Yeah. Ultimately, if you are descended from
a immigrant from the East, specifically European immigrant, and you're
here in the US and you celebrate Thanksgiving, sadly, what
you're really giving thanks for is being on the winning side.
(11:19):
You know. Um, the Native Americans don't necessarily take thanks
Giving the same way that people of Anglo descent or
European descent in general do. Um. There's actually a day
of morning that they celebrate near Plymouth. Yes, just to
drive the point home. Yeah, they didn't land on Plymouth Rock.
Plymouth Rock landed on them, right, that's the saying. So. Yeah,
(11:40):
but our modern version of Thanksgiving actually comes from a
magazine editor. Right now, Chuck was saying, George Washington, he said,
let's just consolidate all these Thanksgiving days into one. It
didn't really take off, though, but he was the he
was the first one to say it. A magazine editor
named Sarah hale Um started this to writing campaign. Now,
(12:01):
she had actually come across the two surviving documents that
described the first Thanksgiving, so she got some of it's
pretty cool, um, but she really romanticized it and embellished it, um,
and gave us what we think of when we think
of Thanksgiving today, you know, and what the little kids
in elementary school are putting on It all basically came
(12:21):
from this magazine editor's imagination. Um. Take pumpkin pies for example,
I love too, I love pumpkin pie. I do too,
and I'm grateful that they're part of the Thanksgiving and
I'm thankful for it. Um. But did you know that
there was literally impossible that pumpkin pies were part of
the first Thanksgiving. Do you wanna know why? My guess
would be that there were no pumpkins. There were pumpkins,
(12:43):
pumpkins are kind of squashed, and there was no native
to North America. There was pie, but Europeans knew how
to make pie, So what's the problem. Not They probably
didn't have the flour, they probably didn't have the milk.
Even if they did, Still, a year after they'd been there,
the pilar him his head and managed to build a
functioning oven yet, right, so it's literally impossible that they
(13:04):
had pies. And I know they didn't have the cool
whip to doll up on top. Definitely not oil or cream, right, yeah, cream,
that's my that's my vote. Agreed. So Lincoln ratifies UH
and makes it the really official every day he I
think he made it the last day of I think
he made it the last day of November. But it
was from Sarah Hale, from Sarah Hale's letter writing campaign.
(13:27):
And then the Thursday thing came along. I think Franklin
Roosevelt moved it up a week and I love this part.
He They actually started calling it Frank's Giving. It's just
to kind of chide him a little bit because he
changed it up. Yeah, why did he UH? For Christmas shopping?
And he did it because the big national retailers were
lobbying him to extend the Christmas shopping season, right, I did.
(13:49):
Should we talk about turkey? Let's talk, yes about about turkey.
I know you refused to say talk turkey. I love it.
Turkey was not a part of Thanksgiving. Initially they pretty
much said that, correct, It was most likely venison or
some other sort of foul. One there another, there was foul.
And actually, at the time, if you talked to a
Puritan about turkey, they would have that that actually characterized
(14:12):
any kind of foul. So even if they did use
the word turkey, which they didn't, it could mean anything.
But there probably were like ducks and geese on the table.
And we know there was also cranberry too. Yeah, which
is one thing that still holds true today, which is
nice to go ahead with the turkey, Chuck, Well, Turkey
was not a part back then, but it very much
is now of Americans now eat Thanksgiving on turkey, and
(14:33):
I would imagine the tim person who don't. A lot
of those are probably vegetarian. I can't imagine you would
choose another meat if you're not a vegetarian other than turkey,
So you have to be some sort of communists. Yeah,
if we have listeners out there who do who are
not vegetarian and who opt for steak on Thanksgiving, I'd
love to hear from you. Yes, I'd be very cool.
But to furkey is what the vegetarians I prefer because
(14:56):
they like to keep it real, keep it traditions. Anyone
really prefer to furkey or is it done out of
some sort of obligation? Do you think uh? Like I said,
I think it's trying to keep up with the tradition
while still maintaining the ethics that the vegetarians hold understood,
that's my that's my guess, understand, And I think we
shoul talking about football. Wait, hold on, I got more
on turkey. Okay. First of all, we're expected to be
(15:17):
forty six million turkeys this year for Thanksgiving, Alan wowellion pounds.
It's a lot of turkey. And while we're still on
the topic of turkey, can I tell you one more thing?
All right? So you know how a trip to fan
makes you sleepy? Yes, that's not the case. Trip to
fan that you should explain as a chemical in turkey? Correct,
(15:37):
that supposedly makes you sleepy, and actually it does encourage
the production of saratonin, which is a calming agent on
the nervous system. The problem is this trip to fan
is effective pretty much only on an empty stomach. Okay,
So they said, well, what is it about the turkey
that makes you sleepy? It's not the turkey a loan,
it's actually the meal, right, Okay, The average thing giving
(16:00):
the serving. This isn't like the whole spread. This is
what you or I are going to sit down and eat.
The average meal has three thousand calories and two nine
grams of fat. Wow, I looked it up, my friend.
That's the equivalent of six big Max. I was gonna say,
I bet you're gonna put it in big Mac terms.
I knew that was coming back. Is like, it should
be a standard measure seven six six. Yeah, it's actually
(16:24):
calorie wise, it's about five big Max. Fat gram wise,
it's about six big mas. Um. That would make me
sleepy if I ate six big macs exactly. The digestion chuck.
You and I we know and love the fight or
flight response, right. Do you remember when when when you're
faced with danger, digestion stops and everything Well, this is
the exact opposite. Everything else slows down, so your stomach
(16:44):
can be like, oh, I have to get rid of
this because it's a carved, heavy meal. And actually with that,
with three thousand calories and two and twenty nine fat grams,
we would have to run in a moderate pace for
four straight hours to burn that off. And we don't
do that, you know, we don't instead, as Chuck was saying,
watch football. Yes, even people who don't like football. Many
times we'll watch football on Thanksgiving for the tradition of it.
(17:07):
I love football, I love the NFL. I love the
Atlanta Falcons. I'll just go ahead and say that I'm
more college football guy myself. But yes, I know that's fine.
I like that too. But yeah, that's started. In UH four,
the Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears and lost in
and but they lost. It was the lions first year.
The Bears were the national champs, and they only lost
(17:28):
thirteen to sixteen, So pretty good showing for a first
year club, right, they only lost by three points, and
uh save seven years from thirty to forty four they
did not play football, And I believe it probably something
to do with World War two. I didn't look it up. Yeah, probably,
but I doubt if that's coincidence. You know. I have
a theory about the Lions. Actually, I think that they
can never pull together a truly decent team because there's
(17:49):
so many players out there don't want to play on
Thanksgiving and don't want to play on Christmas. The Lions
have to play on both days almost every year. Robbing
their families of fun. Uh. And the Cowboys are the
other team that aditionally plays and they started at that
tradition in nine six. They were Johnny Come Lately, Johnny
Come Lately, and UH. A couple of more things here.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is is I don't I
(18:11):
don't watch it, which is, UM, I'm just not a
big parade guy. But if you're ever in New York City,
here's a little tip around Thanksgiving. One thing that's really
fun to do. My wife and I did it one
year is to go the day before the Thanksgiving Day
parade and watch the the balloons being blown up. You
just walk around Central Park. They're out there, got the
(18:32):
streets closed down, they're blowing up. You know, you see
kermit on the ground. They're blowing them up, and there's
just kids everywhere and parents everywhere, and uh, it's a delight.
And it's not just the mob scene of the actual parade.
I think it's a lot more fun. And that's Chuck's
recommendation for New York City. Yeah, and I've learned over
time that, um, following Chuck around can yield some pretty
cool adventures. You could see Thanksgiving Day parade, balloons being
(18:56):
blown up. You might run into Tony Shalub. You could
find a severed head in a bucket. There's all sorts
of crazy stuff that happens. Been showing. I sound much
more interesting when I start naming these things out loud. Yeah,
so chucky, You got anything else? Uh No, that's it,
It's my favorite. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving
this year. Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving. Remember with the stuff turkey,
that's twenty two to twenty four minutes per pound at
(19:18):
three right, if you don't go to the trouble of
stuff in your your turkey, just knock that down to
eighteen to twenty minutes per pound at the same temperature.
Or you could just forego all that and sit down
to a plate of six big max. Yeah, same result, right, exactly. Well,
until then, Happy Thanksgiving, and remember the reason for this
season as to give thanks for things you have in
(19:39):
your life. Now it's a busy day. There's football, there's food,
there's fun. Take a short time reflect on things, and
don't forget about the vanquished. For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Let us know what you think, Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you
(20:01):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, Are
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuffworks dot com. Welcome to the podcast. This
is Josh. There's Chuck. That's right, that's our best turkey. Yeah,
that was not a turkey. I believe that was the
(00:22):
signal U the police are coming to Owen Wilson Houston
bottle rocket. That's right. Nice? Sorry, nice hipster reference, Chuck?
Is it? I thought that made me a big nerd. No, No,
that's it was a cool movie and everybody should know
about it. Um So turkeys turkeys, Yes, let's I'm not
saying it. Say it. No, let's talk turkey. Okay, so
(00:45):
we are talking turkey. Um it's almost Thanksgiving and I'm
I'm getting a little hungry. Yeah, it's my favorite holiday. Yeah?
Is it really? That's weird? Is it? Yeah? What's yours?
Harbor Day? Flying Day? No? Really? Thanksgivings your favorite holiday? Why? Well?
(01:08):
I enjoyed the rituals of the football. I like the meal.
I like the sentiment behind it, giving thanks and being thankful.
What about presents? You get no presents on Thanksgiving? My
present is being off work for a few days and
laying around and drinking. Uh, that is the gift that
(01:28):
keeps on giving. That's great. I had no idea, Chucking
and fantastic. You were the first person I've ever met
whose favorite holidays Thanksgiving. That's cool, Get out more. My
collection is growing more replete. What's your favorite holiday though? Christmas? Really?
Oh yeah, I like Christmas too, But there's a whole,
you know, shopping thing and the greed of the companies,
(01:49):
it's all. It taints it a bit, in my opinion.
The greed is only it only goes as far as
you let it. You know, if you buy somebody at
present you think is appropriate and not too excessive, they're
not gonna like shove it back in your face. And
so you take this back and double what you paid
for it. Right. I just mean more along the lines
of the consumerism as a whole, I understand. But yeah,
(02:09):
I'm not. I'm off my soapbox. Well let's let's get
back to Chuck's favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. And um, actually everything
you know about Thanksgiving is wrong me, everybody, everybody, most
people right, well, actually I shouldn't say most things. You know,
those elementary school pageants that. You know, a lot of
us are gonna be forced to go watch this season
sure or have seen already. Scarily enough, those are actually
(02:33):
fairly accurate as far as the uh, the Pilgrims and
the Native Americans sitting down together. Yeah, that is very
much the bare bones of the story, right. The wardrobe
is off. Apparently no buckles. Pilgrims didn't wear the they
don't look like the Quaker road sky or they apparently
they only wore black and white on Sunday. And the
buckles again didn't come into fashion until about fifty or
(02:56):
sixty years later, much later. Yeah, um, so the buckles.
You you almost never saw a um you know, the
cartoon turkeys dressed like a pilgrim. Very rarely did you
see that in North America in the seventeenth century. Um,
I've been working on that one. It gets no laughs. Ever,
you want to repeat it, we'll move on. It might
be funny at the second time. So, yeah, there was
(03:18):
there was a guy named Squantu, There were Puritans, settlers, ok,
the Pilgrims, and they did sit down for a feast,
and they landed on Plymouth Rock. Yeah, there was a
lot more to the story, though, all right, so you
want me to give you a little background here, Okay.
So basically the Puritans, and it wasn't just the Puritans
who settled Plymouth. Um, there was actually another group called
(03:40):
the Strangers who thought the Puritans were complete religious wackos. Oh. Yeah,
they did not really get along very well. Um, but
they were all in it together. They called themselves the Strangers.
Uh no, I think the Puritans called them the Strangers. Yeah.
A lot of them were Catholic. Yeah. Um, so they
(04:00):
all they were all in it together because they were
all in deep, really really big trouble. When they landed,
it was November, so they showed up just in time
for a harsh northeastern winter. Um. And in the first
four months, forty eight of the first of the original
hundred people died. We're talking dying of exposure, of starvation,
(04:21):
like horrible ways to die. And the people who survived
the winner weren't much better off than the ones who died.
They still had no idea what they were doing, Like
they brought some types of grain with them that wouldn't
grow in North America. Um, I didn't know what they
were getting into it all. No, No, they wouldn't have said, hey,
let's land in Massachusetts in November. I bet it's nice exactly. Um,
(04:43):
So there was one big stroke of luck that would
actually prove to be enormous luck. Um. They found a
deserted um wapa noag settlement called Pawtucket. Pawtucket actually a
band in his bad word, it's um. Actually it was
deserted because pretty much the entire population had been decimated
(05:05):
by smallpox, which was courtesy of um English explorers and
traders who had come through and said, hey, and here's
some smallpox. So um it was. It was abandoned. It
was deserted. There's no one living there, basically just bones
laying around, but the structures were still there. So the
pilgrims move into this village. It just so happens that
(05:25):
a guy named Squanto had grown That was his home village,
that's where he'd grown up. But he wasn't there when
the smallpox hit, or else he would have likely died
with everybody else. He was actually in England. There was
a depending on who you ask, he was either sponsored
by an English trader and sent to England to be educated,
or he was shipped to England as a slave which
(05:48):
a lot of people don't know this, but the Puritans
actually helped set off the slave trade in North America
before we visited Africa. We used Native Americans as slaves,
and we shipped him back to England commonly um. Either way,
Squanto was educated in England and he'd been away from
several years. He comes home to his home village to
(06:08):
find a bunch of white people squatting there. But it
just so happens that the group of white people are
starving around the verge of death, and all of a sudden,
one of the handful of Native Americans who can speak
English in in on the North American continent at that time,
show up out of the wilderness and says, let me help.
(06:29):
That's crazy how it worked out like that, Well, you
can imagine the Puritans viewed this as they viewed Squanto
as being sent by God, which actually ended up justifying
centuries of you know, genocide and all that, um, because
we were meant to be here clearly, And you kind
of have to wonder that if um Squanto had been
given a flash of the future, would he have helped
(06:52):
you know, I mean, sure we have internet and mental cigarettes,
but at what cost? You know, it makes you wonder
if he would have just kind of walked away back
into the woods like good luck, those fifty may have
died and uh changed the course of you know, American
history for revocably. Yeah. So, um he helps him. He
basically teaches the Puritans how to survive in North America,
(07:16):
how to farm, what to grow get corn, corn big
one huge, which we both know is enormous. And um,
let's see how to hunt deer, how to harvest shellfish, um,
and that from maple trees. So he he, he saves
this group of people. And UM it is true that
(07:38):
out of respect for his help, and by this time
Squanto had been adopted by or absorbed into a nearby
Wapanoag tribe. UM, so out of gratitude, they invited Squanto
and his family for a celebratory feast, which was the
first Thanksgiving exactly. And that's the one that you'll see
(07:59):
in elementary schools around the country this November. And UH
historians think that um it actually did take place in
the fall, so that that much is on part. It's
not probably not what in the fourth Thursday and Thanksgiving.
And I doubt if they watched the New football or
maybe they did sports were involved. Yeah, uh, and they
said they probably based the the dinner on the Native
(08:23):
American meal plan, which I did a little research into that.
And if you want to honor your our Native American
friends here and this Thanksgiving, then you can sit down
and have a traditional Native American meal of a bean soups,
fried mash nice not quite sure what that is. I think, uh,
(08:44):
smushed corn with public milk, and it sounds good. You
can roast yourself a rabbit and uh chow down on
some mutton stew and a little sheep's head and I
would eat all that. I would try. Sheep's head I
never have, but I would happily eat all the rest
of it. Yeah, and that that would be a traditional
or you know those foods are traditional Native American foods. Yeah,
there was, there's one. And and like Chuck said, the
(09:07):
this this much more, this first Thanksgiving much more followed
the Native Americans tradition of Thanksgiving. Um. Had it followed
the Puritans version of Thanksgiving, there would have been a
lot of um praying and not dancing and basically just
standing around being very solemn um. And the Puritans had
days of Thanksgiving like crazy. Um, the Native Americans in
(09:29):
the northeast, the Algonquin speaking people's they celebrated six times
a year, and one of them was the harvest, which
is actually found world round. Yeah, the bunch of ancient
cultures and recent cultures celebrated harvest Thanksgiving. Yeah, so um,
that's that's actually kind of what we do today. We
still kind of celebrated a little more like the the
(09:51):
Indian version than the Puritan version. So um, that's the
story of the First Thanksgiving and basically it led to
I've read I've read analysis on it, and people speculate
that the Puritans were grateful, but at the same time
(10:12):
they did see Squanto sent by God like he had
no choice in it. And ultimately they were kind of
getting along because they were about the only English in
the area and that they were vastly outnumbered by the
Native Americans. Well, within twenty years, the children of both
of these groups who were seated at the First Thanksgiving
dinner were murdering one another in King Philip's War, And
(10:36):
that was the beginning of that. Right, So let's flash
forward a little bit show to the official Thanksgivings. Yeah,
the way we recognize that right, Well, if you're talking
about officially recognized George Washington started at, Yeah, that's the
sporadic Thanksgiving celebrations that marked actually, sadly, a lot of
(10:56):
them marked um victories over Native trial vibes. Um, and
considering how things got started, it's that's quite a kick
in the face. Yeah. Ultimately, if you are descended from
a immigrant from the East, specifically European immigrant, and you're
here in the US and you celebrate Thanksgiving, sadly, what
you're really giving thanks for is being on the winning side.
(11:19):
You know. Um, the Native Americans don't necessarily take thanks
Giving the same way that people of Anglo descent or
European descent in general do. Um. There's actually a day
of morning that they celebrate near Plymouth. Yes, just to
drive the point home. Yeah, they didn't land on Plymouth Rock.
Plymouth Rock landed on them, right, that's the saying. So. Yeah,
(11:40):
but our modern version of Thanksgiving actually comes from a
magazine editor. Right now, Chuck was saying, George Washington, he said,
let's just consolidate all these Thanksgiving days into one. It
didn't really take off, though, but he was the he
was the first one to say it. A magazine editor
named Sarah hale Um started this to writing campaign. Now,
(12:01):
she had actually come across the two surviving documents that
described the first Thanksgiving, so she got some of it's
pretty cool, um, but she really romanticized it and embellished it, um,
and gave us what we think of when we think
of Thanksgiving today, you know, and what the little kids
in elementary school are putting on It all basically came
(12:21):
from this magazine editor's imagination. Um. Take pumpkin pies for example,
I love too, I love pumpkin pie. I do too,
and I'm grateful that they're part of the Thanksgiving and
I'm thankful for it. Um. But did you know that
there was literally impossible that pumpkin pies were part of
the first Thanksgiving. Do you wanna know why? My guess
would be that there were no pumpkins. There were pumpkins,
(12:43):
pumpkins are kind of squashed, and there was no native
to North America. There was pie, but Europeans knew how
to make pie, So what's the problem. Not They probably
didn't have the flour, they probably didn't have the milk.
Even if they did, Still, a year after they'd been there,
the pilar him his head and managed to build a
functioning oven yet, right, so it's literally impossible that they
(13:04):
had pies. And I know they didn't have the cool
whip to doll up on top. Definitely not oil or cream, right, yeah, cream,
that's my that's my vote. Agreed. So Lincoln ratifies UH
and makes it the really official every day he I
think he made it the last day of I think
he made it the last day of November. But it
was from Sarah Hale, from Sarah Hale's letter writing campaign.
(13:27):
And then the Thursday thing came along. I think Franklin
Roosevelt moved it up a week and I love this part.
He They actually started calling it Frank's Giving. It's just
to kind of chide him a little bit because he
changed it up. Yeah, why did he UH? For Christmas shopping?
And he did it because the big national retailers were
lobbying him to extend the Christmas shopping season, right, I did.
(13:49):
Should we talk about turkey? Let's talk, yes about about turkey.
I know you refused to say talk turkey. I love it.
Turkey was not a part of Thanksgiving. Initially they pretty
much said that, correct, It was most likely venison or
some other sort of foul. One there another, there was foul.
And actually, at the time, if you talked to a
Puritan about turkey, they would have that that actually characterized
(14:12):
any kind of foul. So even if they did use
the word turkey, which they didn't, it could mean anything.
But there probably were like ducks and geese on the table.
And we know there was also cranberry too. Yeah, which
is one thing that still holds true today, which is
nice to go ahead with the turkey, Chuck, Well, Turkey
was not a part back then, but it very much
is now of Americans now eat Thanksgiving on turkey, and
(14:33):
I would imagine the tim person who don't. A lot
of those are probably vegetarian. I can't imagine you would
choose another meat if you're not a vegetarian other than turkey,
So you have to be some sort of communists. Yeah,
if we have listeners out there who do who are
not vegetarian and who opt for steak on Thanksgiving, I'd
love to hear from you. Yes, I'd be very cool.
But to furkey is what the vegetarians I prefer because
(14:56):
they like to keep it real, keep it traditions. Anyone
really prefer to furkey or is it done out of
some sort of obligation? Do you think uh? Like I said,
I think it's trying to keep up with the tradition
while still maintaining the ethics that the vegetarians hold understood,
that's my that's my guess, understand, And I think we
shoul talking about football. Wait, hold on, I got more
on turkey. Okay. First of all, we're expected to be
(15:17):
forty six million turkeys this year for Thanksgiving, Alan wowellion pounds.
It's a lot of turkey. And while we're still on
the topic of turkey, can I tell you one more thing?
All right? So you know how a trip to fan
makes you sleepy? Yes, that's not the case. Trip to
fan that you should explain as a chemical in turkey? Correct,
(15:37):
that supposedly makes you sleepy, and actually it does encourage
the production of saratonin, which is a calming agent on
the nervous system. The problem is this trip to fan
is effective pretty much only on an empty stomach. Okay,
So they said, well, what is it about the turkey
that makes you sleepy? It's not the turkey a loan,
it's actually the meal, right, Okay, The average thing giving
(16:00):
the serving. This isn't like the whole spread. This is
what you or I are going to sit down and eat.
The average meal has three thousand calories and two nine
grams of fat. Wow, I looked it up, my friend.
That's the equivalent of six big Max. I was gonna say,
I bet you're gonna put it in big Mac terms.
I knew that was coming back. Is like, it should
be a standard measure seven six six. Yeah, it's actually
(16:24):
calorie wise, it's about five big Max. Fat gram wise,
it's about six big mas. Um. That would make me
sleepy if I ate six big macs exactly. The digestion chuck.
You and I we know and love the fight or
flight response, right. Do you remember when when when you're
faced with danger, digestion stops and everything Well, this is
the exact opposite. Everything else slows down, so your stomach
(16:44):
can be like, oh, I have to get rid of
this because it's a carved, heavy meal. And actually with that,
with three thousand calories and two and twenty nine fat grams,
we would have to run in a moderate pace for
four straight hours to burn that off. And we don't
do that, you know, we don't instead, as Chuck was saying,
watch football. Yes, even people who don't like football. Many
times we'll watch football on Thanksgiving for the tradition of it.
(17:07):
I love football, I love the NFL. I love the
Atlanta Falcons. I'll just go ahead and say that I'm
more college football guy myself. But yes, I know that's fine.
I like that too. But yeah, that's started. In UH four,
the Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears and lost in
and but they lost. It was the lions first year.
The Bears were the national champs, and they only lost
(17:28):
thirteen to sixteen, So pretty good showing for a first
year club, right, they only lost by three points, and
uh save seven years from thirty to forty four they
did not play football, And I believe it probably something
to do with World War two. I didn't look it up. Yeah, probably,
but I doubt if that's coincidence. You know. I have
a theory about the Lions. Actually, I think that they
can never pull together a truly decent team because there's
(17:49):
so many players out there don't want to play on
Thanksgiving and don't want to play on Christmas. The Lions
have to play on both days almost every year. Robbing
their families of fun. Uh. And the Cowboys are the
other team that aditionally plays and they started at that
tradition in nine six. They were Johnny Come Lately, Johnny
Come Lately, and UH. A couple of more things here.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is is I don't I
(18:11):
don't watch it, which is, UM, I'm just not a
big parade guy. But if you're ever in New York City,
here's a little tip around Thanksgiving. One thing that's really
fun to do. My wife and I did it one
year is to go the day before the Thanksgiving Day
parade and watch the the balloons being blown up. You
just walk around Central Park. They're out there, got the
(18:32):
streets closed down, they're blowing up. You know, you see
kermit on the ground. They're blowing them up, and there's
just kids everywhere and parents everywhere, and uh, it's a delight.
And it's not just the mob scene of the actual parade.
I think it's a lot more fun. And that's Chuck's
recommendation for New York City. Yeah, and I've learned over
time that, um, following Chuck around can yield some pretty
cool adventures. You could see Thanksgiving Day parade, balloons being
(18:56):
blown up. You might run into Tony Shalub. You could
find a severed head in a bucket. There's all sorts
of crazy stuff that happens. Been showing. I sound much
more interesting when I start naming these things out loud. Yeah,
so chucky, You got anything else? Uh No, that's it,
It's my favorite. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving
this year. Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving. Remember with the stuff turkey,
that's twenty two to twenty four minutes per pound at
(19:18):
three right, if you don't go to the trouble of
stuff in your your turkey, just knock that down to
eighteen to twenty minutes per pound at the same temperature.
Or you could just forego all that and sit down
to a plate of six big max. Yeah, same result, right, exactly. Well,
until then, Happy Thanksgiving, and remember the reason for this
season as to give thanks for things you have in
(19:39):
your life. Now it's a busy day. There's football, there's food,
there's fun. Take a short time reflect on things, and
don't forget about the vanquished. For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Let us know what you think, Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you
(20:01):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, Are
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