CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We all agree that a traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes things like turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, but why do we eat these foods on Thanksgiving?
First up: the big bird on the table. You might assume it's because the pilgrims ate turkey on the first Thanksgiving. First-hand accounts of that event don't mention turkey, but they were common in the area.
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It's also a uniquely North American animal, so when President Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday, turkey gained traction as the star of the table.
But what about the cranberry sauce? While cranberries would have been easy to come by, pilgrims would have been missing the main ingredient that makes it delicious… sugar. But the tart berry is so identifiable as American it landed on the Thanksgiving table.
It's the same story with pumpkin pie. The first pilgrims would have been missing some of the main ingredients for pumpkin pie, mainly butter and flour. By the time the national holiday came along it was firmly entrenched in the American playbook.
While our Thanksgiving meal may not be historically accurate, it's still 100% American.