Why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving? A historian explains
AUSTIN, Texas - The first Thanksgiving didn’t necessarily look like the one we celebrate today.
"Every agrarian society has pretty much some sort of harvest festival, so you either raise enough food that you’re going to make it through the year and you pray to your God, thank you, we won’t starve this winter, or you didn’t get enough food and you pray to your God you won’t die during that winter." Texas A&M history professor Troy Bickham said.
In 1621, the pilgrims were facing their second winter, had a decent crop, and held a festival, but there was no indication it happened every year.
About 200 years later, Sarah Hale, a magazine editor, pushed for an annual Thanksgiving.
"She reinvents essentially Thanksgiving as this family holiday that everyone gets together and it pushes that the real founding of America came from the religious motivated pilgrims, not all the people who settled Virginia," Bickham said.
Bickham said part of this new holiday celebration was eating Thanksgiving.
"They’re relatively easy to get, it’s the perfect bird for the holiday because it’s huge and it’s cheap," Bickham said.
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It may or may not have been eaten in 1621, but Bickham said even if the Pilgrims landed in Texas, the meal would probably have been similar, but more deer.
"There would have been maze or corn, beans and squash would have been the basis of the diet, so there would have been pumpkins, but probably not the sort of pumpkins we think of and not pumpkin pie," Bickham said.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the day of Thanksgiving and praise and recipes started showing up in newspapers.
"People write in recipes saying try this recipe, try this recipe and they sort of take off," Bickham said.
FOX 7 asked Austin residents and visitors their favorites and many had different answers, including sweet potatoes, cornbread dressing, pecan pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin pie, and stuffing.