Why Do We Eat Turkey at Thanksgiving and Where It Began

Every November, around 46 million turkeys end up on American tables in a single day, and almost nobody at those tables can say exactly why it is turkey rather than ham, chicken or beef. The usual answer, "because the Pilgrims ate it," is only partly true. The real story of why we eat turkey at Thanksgiving involves a 1621 harvest meal, a magazine editor who campaigned for 17 years, and a very practical farm calculation.

Here is how the bird became the centrepiece, which parts of the popular version hold up, and which do not.

What the 1621 harvest feast actually served

The event Americans call the first Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1621. About 50 English colonists and roughly 90 Wampanoag men led by Massasoit shared food over three days. We know this from just two short written sources, and neither one says turkey was the main dish.

Edward Winslow wrote that the governor sent four men "fowling" and that they brought back enough birds to feed the company for almost a week. Fowl could mean ducks, geese or wild turkeys, all plentiful around Plymouth. Winslow also notes that the Wampanoag arrived with five deer. So the best evidence suggests venison was a large part of the meal, with mixed wildfowl alongside it, plus local corn, and probably fish, eels and shellfish.

William Bradford, the colony's governor, later wrote that in that autumn there was "a great store of wild turkeys." That line is the strongest link to the bird, but it describes the season's supplies, not a specific dinner menu.

Why do we eat turkey at Thanksgiving today?

The short answer is that turkey was the right bird at the right moment when Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the 1800s. Several practical reasons lined up.

It was native, large and seasonal

Wild turkeys are native to North America, and by the 1800s farm turkeys were common across the eastern states. A single bird could weigh 7 to 10 kilograms, enough to feed a big family with leftovers. Late November was also when farm turkeys reached their full autumn weight.

It was not needed for anything else

Cows gave milk, and hens laid eggs through the year, so slaughtering them for one meal cost a farm family future food. A turkey was raised for meat and nothing else. Killing one for a holiday dinner was an easy decision on the household budget.

It felt special

Turkey was more expensive and less everyday than chicken or pork, which made it feel like a feast. That same logic is why the English already roasted large birds for Christmas, so the idea of a whole roasted bird as a celebration dish arrived with the settlers.

The editor who made it a national habit

Before the 1860s, Thanksgiving was a patchwork. Different states held it on different days, some not at all. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, one of the most widely read magazines of the time, wanted one national day. She wrote editorials and letters to presidents for about 17 years.

Hale also did something just as influential: she published recipes and descriptions of the ideal Thanksgiving table, with a roast turkey at the centre, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Her 1827 novel Northwood described a New England feast with turkey "placed at the head of the table." Millions of readers absorbed that picture.

In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. The menu that spread with it was the one Hale had been promoting. In 1941, Congress fixed the date as the fourth Thursday of November, where it remains.

Did the Pilgrims really start the tradition?

Many explainers answer "yes, the Pilgrims ate turkey, so we do too." That is the version taught in a lot of primary schools, and I think it gives the 1621 meal far too much credit for the menu.

The Plymouth feast was largely forgotten for two centuries. The detailed Winslow account was only rediscovered and widely published in the 1840s, after the turkey dinner was already a New England custom. Writers then linked the two, partly because it made a neat national origin story. In other words, the tradition came first and the Pilgrim explanation was attached later.

That does not make the story false so much as tidied up. Wildfowl almost certainly appeared in 1621, possibly including turkey. But the reason your family roasts a turkey this year owes more to 19th century farming, Hale's magazine and Lincoln's proclamation than to anything specific that Winslow wrote down. Superstitions and customs often work this way, as with the story behind why people knock on wood, where a later explanation gets fixed onto an older habit.

How the turkey itself changed

The turkey on the table now is a different animal from the one at Plymouth. Wild turkeys are lean, dark fleshed and can fly short distances. Since the 1950s, American farms have bred the Broad Breasted White, which grows so much breast meat that it cannot mate naturally, and reaches market weight in about 14 to 20 weeks.

Some modern touches arrived very late:

• The presidential pardon: turkeys were presented to presidents from the 1870s, but the formal annual pardon only became a fixed ceremony in 1989.
• Frozen birds: commercially frozen whole turkeys became common in the 1950s, which moved the tradition from farm to supermarket.
• Black Friday shopping: the day after Thanksgiving turned into a retail event in the 20th century, a story told in why it is called Black Friday.

Why the tradition sticks

About 88 percent of Americans say they eat turkey at Thanksgiving, according to the National Turkey Federation's long running surveys. Part of the staying power is simple repetition: families cook what their parents cooked. Part of it is logistics. One large bird is easier to time and serve to 12 people than several smaller dishes of meat.

And part of it is that a shared menu makes a shared holiday. When everybody eats roughly the same meal on the same Thursday, the dinner itself becomes the ritual, just as Hale hoped.

Frequently asked questions

Did the Pilgrims eat turkey at the first Thanksgiving?

Possibly, but no source says so directly. Edward Winslow mentions wildfowl and five deer brought by the Wampanoag, and William Bradford notes plenty of wild turkeys that autumn. Venison was almost certainly a bigger part of the meal.

When did turkey become the main Thanksgiving dish?

Turkey became the standard centrepiece during the 1800s, helped along by Sarah Josepha Hale's writing. Lincoln's 1863 proclamation of a national Thanksgiving spread her version of the menu across the country.

Why don't Americans eat chicken at Thanksgiving instead?

In the 1800s chickens were kept for eggs, so killing them for a single meal cost the household food later. Turkeys were bigger, seasonal and raised only for meat, which made them the practical choice for a large family feast.