Thanksgiving Trivia Questions

Thanksgiving history trivia

The 1621 harvest at Plymouth, the Wampanoag and how Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

1. 1.In what year did the Pilgrims and their Native neighbors share the harvest celebration often called the first Thanksgiving?Answer: 1621. The Pilgrims did not call it Thanksgiving at the time. It was a harvest celebration.
2. 2.Which Native American nation joined the Pilgrims for the 1621 harvest celebration?Answer: The Wampanoag. The Wampanoag have lived in what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island for thousands of years.
3. 3.Who was the sachem, or leader, of the Native nation that joined the 1621 harvest celebration?Answer: Massasoit. Massasoit was a title meaning "great sachem." His name was Ousamequin.
4. 4.About how many days did the 1621 harvest celebration last?Answer: Three. About 90 Wampanoag men came, along with about 50 English colonists.
5. 5.What was the name of the ship that carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic in 1620?Answer: The Mayflower. It carried 102 passengers.
6. 6.Where did the Pilgrims build their colony in 1620?Answer: Plymouth. Plymouth is in what is now Massachusetts.
7. 7.Before sailing to America, in which Dutch city did many of the Pilgrims live for about 11 years?Answer: Leiden. They left England for the Netherlands and settled in Leiden in 1609.
8. 8.What was the agreement the Pilgrims signed aboard their ship in 1620 called?Answer: The Mayflower Compact. It set out how the colonists would govern themselves.
9. 9.Which Patuxet man, who spoke English, helped the Pilgrims as an interpreter and guide?Answer: Tisquantum (Squanto). He had learned English after being kidnapped and taken to Europe years earlier.
10. 10.Which crop, new to the Pilgrims, did Tisquantum show them how to grow?Answer: Corn. He showed them how to plant it with fish to feed the soil.
11. 11.Which animal did the Native guests bring to the 1621 celebration, according to a Pilgrim's letter?Answer: Deer. Edward Winslow wrote that they brought five deer.
12. 12.Which writer and editor asked presidents for 17 years to make Thanksgiving a national holiday?Answer: Sarah Josepha Hale. For about 40 years, she was the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, one of the most popular magazines of her time.
13. 13.Which president proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863?Answer: Abraham Lincoln. He set the holiday for the last Thursday of November.
14. 14.Which president first proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the new nation, in 1789?Answer: George Washington. He named Thursday, November 26, 1789, as the day.
15. 15.Which president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939, giving it the nickname "Franksgiving"?Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt. The idea was to give stores a longer holiday shopping season during the Great Depression.
16. 16.By law, on which day is Thanksgiving held in the United States?Answer: The fourth Thursday of November. Congress made it law in December 1941, and the rule took effect the next year.
17. 17.In which country is Thanksgiving celebrated on the second Monday of October?Answer: Canada. Canada has celebrated Thanksgiving on that day since 1957.

Thanksgiving food trivia

Cranberries, pies, spices and the sides everyone fights over.

1. 18.Which berry is used to make the tart red sauce served with turkey?Answer: Cranberries. Cranberries grow on low vines in sandy bogs.
2. 19.Why do farmers flood cranberry bogs at harvest time?Answer: So the berries float. Cranberries have tiny pockets of air inside, which is why they float.
3. 20.Cranberries got their name because their flowers look like which bird?Answer: A crane. Early settlers called them "craneberries."
4. 21.Which sweet spice, made from tree bark, goes into almost every pumpkin pie?Answer: Cinnamon. Cinnamon comes from the dried inner bark of cinnamon trees.
5. 22.Which pumpkin pie spice comes from the dried flower buds of a tree?Answer: Cloves. Cloves come from Indonesia's Maluku Islands, once known as the Spice Islands.
6. 23.In the American South, what is stuffing often called?Answer: Dressing. In many homes, "dressing" means it is baked in a pan instead of inside the bird.
7. 24.Sweet potato casserole is often topped with which fluffy white sweet?Answer: Marshmallows. Recipes for sweet potatoes with marshmallows go back to the early 1900s.
8. 25.Sweet potatoes are in the same plant family as which garden flower?Answer: The morning glory. Regular potatoes belong to a different family, along with tomatoes.
9. 26.What is traditional turkey gravy made from?Answer: Pan drippings. Flour or cornstarch is stirred in to make it thick.
10. 27.Which nut pie is a Thanksgiving favorite, especially in the South?Answer: Pecan pie. Pecan trees are native to the southern United States and northern Mexico.
11. 28.Which vegetable is the star of a classic casserole topped with crispy fried onions?Answer: Green beans. The dish was invented in a test kitchen in 1955.
12. 29.In the "Three Sisters" way of planting used by many Native nations, corn and beans grow together with what?Answer: Squash. The corn holds up the beans, and the wide squash leaves shade the soil.
13. 30.What are the long, silky threads at the top of an ear of corn called?Answer: Silk. Each strand of silk connects to a single kernel.
14. 31.Succotash is a dish made mainly from corn and what?Answer: Lima beans. The name comes from a word in Narragansett, a language of Native people in Rhode Island.
15. 32.Which soft, gray-green herb is a classic flavor in Thanksgiving stuffing?Answer: Sage. Sage is a member of the mint family.
16. 33.Which tan, bell-shaped winter squash has bright orange flesh and a long neck?Answer: Butternut squash. Butternut squash was developed in Massachusetts in the 1940s.

Thanksgiving parade trivia

Giant balloons, marching bands and the big finish.

1. 34.In what year did giant character balloons first float in New York City's Thanksgiving Day parade?Answer: 1927. Before the balloons, the parade featured live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo.
2. 35.Which gas fills the giant parade balloons?Answer: Helium. Helium is lighter than air and does not burn, which makes it safer than hydrogen.
3. 36.In the late 1920s, what happened to the giant balloons at the end of the parade?Answer: They were let go into the sky. Some carried a return address, and people who found them could mail them back for a reward.
4. 37.In a marching band, what is the group that spins and tosses flags called?Answer: The color guard. The name comes from soldiers who guarded an army unit's flags, which are called its colors.
5. 38.Who traditionally arrives at the very end of the big Thanksgiving parades?Answer: Santa Claus. His arrival marks the start of the holiday season.
6. 39.What is a decorated platform that moves along in a parade called?Answer: A float. Many floats are built on top of trucks or trailers.
7. 40.What kind of weather can keep giant parade balloons flying low or on the ground?Answer: Strong winds. In New York City, the balloons can be grounded if the wind is too strong.
8. 41.Which big brass horn, often seen in marching bands, wraps around the player's body?Answer: The sousaphone. It is named after the composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa.
9. 42.What is the leader of a marching band called?Answer: The drum major. Drum majors often carry a tall staff called a mace.
10. 43.What is the honorary leader of a parade called?Answer: The grand marshal. Being named grand marshal is an honor given to someone the community admires.
11. 44.What are the tiny bits of colored paper thrown at celebrations called?Answer: Confetti. The word is Italian, and it first meant small sweets thrown during carnival.
12. 45.What do people on the ground use to steer the giant parade balloons?Answer: Ropes. The biggest balloons need dozens of handlers.

Thanksgiving traditions trivia

Wishbones, turkey trots and harvest festivals around the world.

1. 46.What is the horn-shaped basket overflowing with fruit and vegetables called?Answer: A cornucopia. The word comes from Latin for "horn of plenty."
2. 47.Which Y-shaped turkey bone do two people pull apart after the meal?Answer: The wishbone. By tradition, whoever gets the bigger piece gets a wish. Scientists call it the furcula, and it is made of two collarbones joined together.
3. 48.Which sport has been played on Thanksgiving Day in the United States since the 1800s?Answer: American football. College teams were playing Thanksgiving games as early as 1876.
4. 49.Which animal gets a ceremonial "pardon" at the White House each year before Thanksgiving?Answer: A turkey. The pardon became an official yearly event in 1989.
5. 50.What is a Thanksgiving-style meal shared with friends often called?Answer: Friendsgiving. Dictionaries trace the word back to the late 2000s.
6. 51.What do kids trace on paper to make the classic Thanksgiving turkey craft?Answer: Their hand. The thumb becomes the head and the fingers become the tail feathers.
7. 52.What are the fun runs held on Thanksgiving morning in many towns called?Answer: Turkey trots. Buffalo, New York, has held a turkey trot every year since 1896.
8. 53.What is the big autumn harvest holiday in Korea called?Answer: Chuseok. Families share half-moon-shaped rice cakes called songpyeon.
9. 54.Which Chinese harvest festival is celebrated with mooncakes?Answer: The Mid-Autumn Festival. It falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, under a full moon.
10. 55.What is Germany's autumn harvest thanksgiving festival called?Answer: Erntedankfest. It is usually celebrated on the first Sunday in October.
11. 56.What do you call a meal where every guest brings a dish to share?Answer: A potluck. The word goes back to the 1500s, when it meant whatever food happened to be in the pot.
12. 57.What are the hard, bumpy, oddly shaped squash used as fall table decorations called?Answer: Gourds. People have made dried gourds into bowls, bottles and rattles for thousands of years.

Turkey trivia questions and answers

Snoods, wattles and other things you never knew about the bird.

1. 58.What is the red, fleshy skin that hangs under a turkey's beak called?Answer: The wattle. The wattle can turn bright red when a turkey is excited or upset.
2. 59.What is the fleshy flap that hangs down over a turkey's beak called?Answer: The snood. A male turkey's snood gets longer when he is showing off.
3. 60.What is an adult male turkey called?Answer: A tom. A young male is called a jake, and a young female is called a jenny.
4. 61.What is a female turkey called?Answer: A hen. The famous gobble comes mostly from the males.
5. 62.What is a baby turkey called?Answer: A poult. Poults leave the nest with their mother within about a day of hatching.
6. 63.Where do wild turkeys sleep at night?Answer: In trees. Wild turkeys can fly short distances, unlike most farm turkeys.
7. 64.In a 1784 letter, Benjamin Franklin called which bird "much more respectable" than the bald eagle?Answer: The turkey. It is a myth that he officially proposed the turkey as the national bird.
8. 65.Europe's first turkeys came from birds raised in which present-day country?Answer: Mexico. Spanish explorers brought them to Europe in the early 1500s.
9. 66.What is a group of wild turkeys usually called?Answer: A flock. In winter, wild turkeys often gather in large flocks.
10. 67.Wild turkeys love to eat which nuts from oak trees?Answer: Acorns. They also eat seeds, berries and insects.
11. 68.What is it called when a male turkey puffs up his feathers and fans out his tail?Answer: Strutting. He often drags his wing tips along the ground while he does it.
12. 69.What is the tuft of hair-like feathers on a tom turkey's chest called?Answer: The beard. Some hens grow beards too.
13. 70.A turkey's bare head can change color. Which three colors can it show?Answer: Red, white and blue. The colors change with the turkey's mood.
14. 71.What is the lower part of a turkey's leg called?Answer: The drumstick. The upper part of the leg is called the thigh.

How to play Thanksgiving trivia at the table

Split the table into teams and play this list with the player at the top of the page. The phone tells each team when it is their turn, someone reads the question out loud, and then everyone sees the answer and a short fact. For team names, 5, 10 or 15 questions per team and the full setup, open the Trivia game, where the Thanksgiving deck is promoted in November.

Every question works with or without the four options, so grandparents and kids can play on the same team.

• Play kids against grown-ups, and give the kids multiple choice.
• Play one round while the turkey rests and another with dessert.
• Let the winning team pick who does the dishes, or who gets the last slice of pie.
• Start with Turkey facts. Nobody knows what a snood is, and everyone wants to.

About the history questions

The History round sticks to what records show. In 1621, the Pilgrims at Plymouth and about 90 Wampanoag men shared a harvest celebration that lasted about three days. Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for a national holiday for years, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed one in 1863, and a law signed in 1941 set the date as the fourth Thursday of November.

The Wampanoag still live in Massachusetts and Rhode Island today, and many Native families see the holiday differently. If kids ask about that, it is a good conversation for the table or the classroom. The questions skip the popular myths and stick to names and dates you can look up.

More games for Thanksgiving

Trivia works well while everyone is still sitting down. When people get up, switch to the Thanksgiving games, with charades, guessing games and more. Teachers can use this list for a class party too, along with our classroom games. And when December comes, there are Christmas trivia questions ready to go.

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