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Why Do We Eat Turkey on Thanksgiving? How One Big Bird Took Over the Holiday

It probably wasn't the star of the first feast. It ended up the star anyway.

By the Buzzuh Team

The short answer

Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving mostly because of 19th-century tradition, not because of a famous menu from 1621. Turkeys were native, big enough to feed a crowd and in season in the fall, and writers who pushed for a national Thanksgiving made roast turkey the centerpiece of the holiday dinner. The tradition stuck.

Was turkey even at the first Thanksgiving?

Maybe, but nobody wrote it down for sure. The 1621 harvest celebration in Plymouth is described in a letter by colonist Edward Winslow, who said the governor sent men out "fowling" and that the Wampanoag brought five deer.

So venison was definitely on the table. "Fowl" could have meant wild turkey, but it could also have meant ducks or geese. Another colonist, William Bradford, later wrote that there were plenty of wild turkeys around that fall, which is why a lot of historians think turkey was probably part of the mix. Probably. Not the guest of honor.

The bird made a lot of sense

Wild turkeys are native to North America, and by the 1800s plenty of American farms raised them. A turkey was big enough to feed a whole family, plus the cousins who "just stopped by."

Another common explanation is that turkeys were practical to eat. A chicken could keep laying eggs and a cow could keep giving milk, but a turkey was mostly good for one thing: dinner. Sorry, turkeys.

A magazine editor made it official-ish

Thanksgiving wasn't a national holiday for a long time. Writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale spent years writing letters and editorials pushing for one national day of thanks. Her 1827 novel Northwood even described a Thanksgiving feast with roast turkey front and center.

In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving, and it has been celebrated every year since. As families across the country started celebrating the same holiday, the turkey-centered dinner Hale and others described became the standard.

Why not ham, or something else?

Some families absolutely do ham, and nobody is calling the Thanksgiving police. But by the time the holiday went national, turkey already had a reputation as the special-occasion bird, and it's been the default ever since.

Today, turkey is so tied to the holiday that a lot of people call Thanksgiving "Turkey Day." Which is a little rude to the mashed potatoes, honestly.

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