Let's Talk Turkey: Thanksgiving Facts That Everyone Oughta Know! Number 6

We thought you might all like to know a few facts this Thanksgiving that you can share with your families and friends in those awkward silent moments...yes, you know what we're talking about! Avoid those awkward moments and fill them with these facts!

It's the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that's linked to the birth of our modern holiday. The truth is the first "real" Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.  Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621.  The letter had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s.  In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow's brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing the 1621 feast the "First Thanksgiving."  In Winslow's short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn't even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration.  But after its mid-1800s appearance, Young's designation caught on—to say the least.

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