Thanksgiving is done. The turkey and stuffing have been eaten, and the wishbone has been snapped. At this point you might ask yourself, when did all of these traditions begin?

 Well for starters, the Thanksgiving day first football game was played in 1934 and it was hosted by the Detroit Lions. In 1966 the Dallas Cowboys followed. For every Thanksgiving since, two of the three Thanksgiving football games that have played have included the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions.

The wishbone is a common tradition that includes making a wish and breaking a turkey’s furcula. The person with the bigger piece gets their wish granted. This tradition can be traced all the way back to 800 BCE from the Etruscans in Ancient Italy.

According to makeitgrateful.com, “…they (Etruscans) practiced bird divination — the practice of using birds as oracles to predict the future. Chickens were allowed to peck at Etruscan letters on the ground to divine the answers to questions about the future. When a chicken was killed, the Etruscans laid the wishbone (technically known as the furcula) in the sun so the people could touch it and continue to use the chicken’s oracle power even after its death. People who touched the bone made wishes as they did, which is why we now commonly call it the wishbone.”

The Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade is one of the most famous parades that New Yorkers love to watch. The massive balloons of kids toys and characters from children’s books entices kids to get their parents to watch the parade. In 1924, Macy’s first parade wasn’t about Thanksgiving, it was about Christmas. The founder of Macy’s, Rowland Hussey Macy hoped that the parade would inspire people to come shop at Macy’s during the Christmas season and in my opinion it worked!

In fact, all of these traditions work! I cannot wait for next Thanksgiving!