Thanksgiving began so we could all people could give thanks to neighbors, friends and families, and sometimes in the holiday rush, people forget that original message.
While our own turkey, the Hokie Bird, might ask to serve up a Thanksgiving ham instead:
-Ben Franklin wanted to make the turkey the national bird.
-A wild turkey has excellent hearing and vision, and its field of vision is about 270 degrees. (This is the main reason why they continue to outwit some hunters).
-A domestic turkey is twice as heavy as a wild turkey, a fact that keeps most domestic turkeys from flying.
-Wild turkeys spend the night in trees; they fly to their roosts around sunset.
-Wild turkeys can fly for short distances at up to a speed of 55 mph.
For those of you who need a hrefresher, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621. After landing at Plymouth Rock on Dec. 11, 1620, the pilgrims suffered a severe winter. But after a bountiful harvest in 1621, the pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving with the Native Americans sometime between late September and early November.
Thanksgiving was not held annually until Sara Josepha Hale, a famous magazine editor, persuaded Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday in November of 1863 would be a day of giving thanks and praise. Each year for 75 years, the sitting president proclaimed Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of every November.
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed that tradition, setting it one week earlier, to the fourth Thursday in November in hopes that the added Christmas shopping period would help boost an economy still recovering from the Great Depression. Congress passed the legislation, declaring it a federal holiday, one we still celebrate on the fourth Thursday of November.
Most every college student can agree on one thing: they love Thanksgiving because of all the food. "One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie and my mom's homemade corn pudding," said junior Laura Milanowski, adding, "basically all of the delicious food and getting to see my family."
Junior Juliette Fitzsimmons said her favorite part of Thanksgiving is "the fact that my family bakes an excessive amount of pies. We eat one slice of each on Thanksgiving night, and continue to eat them the next morning with our coffee."
"Also, watching the Macy's Day Parade and drinking mimosas in the morning while making the pies is a tradition," Fitzsimmons said. "And the afternoon nap that happens at around 4 p.m., in which we have a Christmas movie on and fall asleep because our tummies are so full."
Will Deacon, a sophomore, says his family has the tradition of always watching the Lions game in the afternoon: "We've gone to the game twice in Detroit, but every Thanksgiving the whole family watches the game together; it's like the Super Bowl for us."
Football is a popular Thanksgiving watch, but so is "Home Alone" and "It's a Wonderful Life." TBS usually shows "Star Wars" and various marathons run throughout the day, but mostly everyone's favorite is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning. Seeing Santa pull up in his sleigh at the end may have meant something different for us when we were younger, but now it means Christmas is just 32 days away.