Why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving?

||| FROM CBS NEWS |||

Certain holidays are associated with different foods, and for Thanksgiving, that’s turkey — but why is that what we eat? We asked a history expert to learn more.

Turkey’s spot on the holiday table can be traced back to a famous American author Sarah Josepha Hale, and her popular book, in which she described a traditional Thanksgiving meal that included a roast turkey.

“For decades, she advocated for an annual Thanksgiving until President Abraham Lincoln made it an official holiday in 1863,” CBS News’ Anne-Marie Green reported ahead of last year’s holiday.

There were also some practical reasons that explain why the turkey has stuck around, Troy Bickham, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, told CBS News, including it being an “ideal celebration bird.”

“At sizes much larger than chickens or geese, they both feed more people and provide an impressive centerpiece to any large celebratory meal. For these reasons, the English brought back turkeys to breed and farm, where they became fairly common in the 16th century,” he said. “When the Pilgrims arrived in America, the turkey would not have been unfamiliar.”

There were about 10 million turkeys in free colonized America at the time, Green reported.

In the 19th century, wild turkeys still roamed much of the eastern half of the United States, from Texas to Maine, Bickham said.

“They are relatively easy to raise in captivity, so they were abundant,” he said.

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