What’s the deal with turkey and Thanksgiving?

(WTAJ) — Why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving? How did food like turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie become staple piece’s in most people’s Thanksgiving?

While Pilgrims and settlers at Plymouth colony did sit down for the “first Thanksgiving,” there is no indication that turkey was served. It is accepted as fact that the Wampanoag brought deer and the Pilgrims provided wild fowl. While the fowl could have been turkeys, which were native to the area, historians believe it to be ducks or geese, according to Britannica .

The introduction of turkey at Thanksgiving

Turkey had become a popular dish by the turn of the 19th century for a few reasons. The bird was considered to be rather plentiful and easy to get. Turkeys on a family farm were almost always available for slaughter because they were only raised for their meat.

Literature also had a helping hand in introducing turkey into the family home. A Christmas carol (1843) by Charles Dicken’s and Northwood (1827) by Sarah Josepha Hale are credited for bolstering the idea of what a Thanksgiving meal looks like, according to Britannica.

In A Christmas Carol, the Cratchit family sits down for a family meal that is akin to a Thanksgiving day meal. Although the family is considered poor in the book, the father brings home a prized turkey so they can truly celebrate the holiday.

Northwood is a novel that is centered around a New England Thanksgiving where a roasted turkey is “placed at the head of the table.” Hale was also campaigning at the time to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. It is speculated that she believed that this would unify the country as it teetered on a civil war, according to Britannica.

Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1843, which was more than 240 years after the “first Thanksgiving” between the Pilgrims and settlers in 1621.

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According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture , in 2022 alone there were 4.86 billion pounds of turkey consumed. In 2019, 5.29 billion pounds of turkey was consumed, which was the most documented from 2017-2022.

Production-wise, in 2021 sales grossed around $5.89 billion. In 2022 the average turkey cost $1.55 per pound. Americans spent over $1 billion on Thanksgiving turkeys in 2022.

To answer the burning question, yes turkey is the most popular Thanksgiving dish in the United States. Following turkey is mashed potatoes, stuffing or dressing, bread or rolls, ham and scalloped potatoes.