Gobble, gobble: Why do Americans eat turkey for Thanksgiving every year?

In America, Thursday was Thanksgiving.

This is a major holiday where millions of people all over the country invite their friends and family to share a meal at their homes.

While the holiday is famous for its camaraderie and companionship, the highlight is unarguably the Thanksgiving turkey which is usually accompanied by mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

But have you ever wondered how Turkey became part of the Thanksgiving tradition?

Let’s take a closer look.

Talking turkey

It was estimated that around 30 million turkeys were consumed on Thanksgiving in America. Ironically, turkey is nowhere to be found on the list of dishes at the first Thanksgiving in 1621. The celebration was started by the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony, who were celebrating their “autumnal harvest” by sharing a meal with indigenous Wampanoag people.

But what did they eat? Venison, fish, shellfish, corn, vegetables, roots, berries, and fowl likely such as duck or goose, according to accounts of the meal written decades afterwards. Was turkey served? Troy Bickham, a history professor and director of the Melbourne Glasscock Centre for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University, told Vox the answer is no. As to why?

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“The long answer is we don’t know. We have two eyewitness accounts describing Thanksgiving, and they were not interested in describing the food. The only thing we know for certain that they ate was venison.”

This wasn’t for a lack of turkeys either. At the time, there were around 10 million wild turkeys roaming across North America. Wild turkeys, also known as Meleagris gallopavo, existed on the continent long before the European pilgrims arrived, lexicographer Erin McKean told NPR. They were found mainly in Mexico and the US Southwest.

However, the Europeans also had a bird similar to turkey known as the African guinea fowl. Experts say it is no small stretch to think that the Europeans mistook one for the other.

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“I bet they look a lot more similar when they’re denuded of their feathers, roasted and on a plate,” McKean added. It was Spanish explorers who brought the bird back to Europe. It was here that they were raised and eaten by many, particularly those in the upper class in Spain.

How turkey became a popular dish

Meanwhile, as the English colonists came to settle in America, they brought along their domesticated descendants of the American turkey with them. These fowl grew increasingly popular as a meal over the years because of myriad reasons. This included their size wherein a single bird could feed a massive family, unlike chickens or cows they did not provide eggs or milk, they were easy to raise, and abundant in the wild.

Cut to 1789 and George Washington, the first President of the United States, announced a day of National Thanksgiving. However, this was more of a one-off celebration rather than a repeating holiday. But it took the efforts of one woman to make turkey a Thanksgiving staple in the mid-19th century.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer and editor of the ladies’ magazine Godey’s – which some have called the Reader’s Digest of its day — mounted a campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Hale, in one of her popular novels, Northwood: A Tale of New England (1827), described a feast thus: “The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station,” thus “sending forth the rich odour of its savoury stuffing, and finely covered with the frost of its basting.”

Hale, incidentally, also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb. Hale, like many other individuals at that time, was looking for a national holiday that Americans could rally around. This came in the backdrop of greater divisions increasing in the United States over the subject of slavery.

Hale, through her reach, persuaded women from all around the country to write to their local representatives asking for Thanksgiving to be made into a national holiday. Millions of women also imitated Hale’s culinary efforts, particularly the turkey recipes in her magazine.

By 1854, over 30 states and US territories celebrated Thanksgiving every year. As the US Civil War raged in 1863, then President Abraham Lincoln officially designated the final Thursday in November as a national Thanksgiving holiday.

By the 20th century, the rise of industrialism made turkeys a relatively cheap meal. “The trend in industrialising poultry in general as far as meat is concerned was to select for larger and larger breast size and animals that would grow to maturity super quickly, and produce more meat faster,” Elan Abrell, a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor in animal studies at Wesleyan University, told History.com.

For the foreseeable future, turkey will remain the centrepiece of the holiday.