In 1863, President Lincoln established the Thanksgiving holiday.   The true meaning of Thanksgiving is being grateful for what you have, but why is it now turkey and football games? Why do we even eat turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving? The pilgrims didn’t eat them.

According to Scholastic, the settlers, with the local Indian tribe, celebrated the first harvest.  Turkey wasn’t included in the first meal, but neither was cranberry sauce. Cranberries were available but not the sugar for the sauce. Sugar was very expensive and hard to obtain. The first meal actually included duck as the main course.

According to Slate Magazine, turkeys have been the bird of choice because they are affordable.  The early settlers would not want to kill a cow for a feast because a cow was too valuable to the life of the farm.

“Turkey is good, but in my opinion ham is better and it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it,” said junior Kasey Carns.

“It  [cranberry sauce] looks really gross in the can, but when it’s homemade, it tastes good,” said junior Marla Wills.

The first Thanksgiving football game became a tradition since 1934 when George Richards (owner of the Detroit Lions) wanted to promote his team. He asked the Bears to come up and play them on Thanksgiving. Ever since then, more teams have been playing on Thanksgiving day but it’s always been Detroit’s tradition.

This year, at 12:30 pm, the Detroit Lions play their annual game against the Chicago Bears.

Then at 4:30 pm, the Philadelphia Eagles play the Dallas Cowboys.

Lastly at 8:30 pm, the Seattle Seahawks play against the San Francisco 49ers.

In Maryland, every Thanksgiving, Loyola Blakefield High School plays their annual football game against the Calvert Hall, two private Catholic schools in Baltimore. Also known as the “Turkey Bowl,” it is played at the M&T stadium and aired on TV and radio. This Thanksgiving will be their 95th contest.  The current standing is 48-37 (Loyola Blakefield is ahead), with several tied games.

“My husband graduated from Calvert Hall, so there is no question that we watch that game on television.  My ideal Thanksgiving starts with cutting holiday shopping coupons, watching the Macy’s parade and then watching Calvert Hall beat Loyola (which has happened the last three years), said Mrs. Natalie Rebetsky, who admits she’s not much on football.

“The TV is on non-stop from all the football games,” said junior Emily Gorham.

 The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade started in 1924 because of Louis Bamberger. They wanted to celebrate with the all of the immigrants that they had recently hired. A man named Anthony Sarg started to work with marionette and Macy’s had hired him after hearing of his talents. They began to experiment and created large balloon animals. The parade with them was in 1927 and was a hit ever since and has had more than 3.5 million people line up in the street.

“I think the parade is pretty cool, but I’ve never seen the whole thing. I always get bored,” says sophomore, Becki Aquino.