Ready or not Southeast Florida the holidays are quickly approaching.  In Just a couple of weeks, Thanksgiving will be here.  Time to start planning for the annual feast.  We are thankful for Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of a national holiday back in 1863, he proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day.  

Some interesting and quirky facts about Thanksgiving Day:

Americans prepare 46 million turkeys for Thanksgiving each year. The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, 1-800-BUTTERBALL, answers almost 100,000 calls and text messages each season for all your cooking needs.  Americans eat a lot of turkeys, specifically, 22 million turkeys are eaten on Christmas and 19 million turkeys on Easter.

On Thanksgiving Day, Americans eat an estimated 50 million pumpkin pies. According to The American Pie Council, more Americans prefer apple pie as their number one choice and pumpkin pie comes in second.

Thanksgiving Dinner inspired Swanson to make the first TV dinners. In 1953, a Swanson employee accidentally ordered 260 tons of Turkey and got the inspiration to create prepared dinners and the tv dinners became a hit in American households. Within the first year, over 10 million tv dinners were sold and the industry was born. 

John F. Kennedy was the first president on record to unofficially pardon a turkey in 1963 but it was not until 1987 that the Reagan Administration pardoned a turkey as a joke. Despite it being a joke, in 1989 George H Bush made it an annual tradition and each president following him has carried on the tradition.