Ah, Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of all. You know why? Because it's all about gratitude rather than what we get, although we do get an amazing amount of food.

Thanksgiving is definitely packed with tradition, but here's the thing.

A lot of those traditions, like when it takes place, what we eat, and the all-important Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade sort of spontaneously happened and then evolved from there.

I'm Patty Steele, unpacking Thanksgiving.

Next on the backstory.

We're back with the backstory.

Last year we did a deep dive into our Thanksgiving traditions, and it was a

really popular episode, so I thought we would share it again, but freshen it up a bit. Plus,

on the follow-up episode, which is coming out in just a few days, just in time for Native American

Heritage Day on Friday, the 29th of November, a listener suggested we look at Thanksgiving

from that perspective.

So please check that out as well.

Thanksgiving is all about food, family, and festivity.

But most of all, it's about gratitude.

But how did the way we celebrate start?

Well, we know the story of the first Thanksgiving in 1621,

but family feasts with turkey overeating parades all came a whole lot later. The whole idea of a

feast this time of year actually originated with immigrants who were used to harvest festivals in late autumn in their

mother countries. As for what we eat, well, it turns out the first Thanksgiving in our parts

may or may not have involved turkey. Historians say that the first feast was likely roasted deer,

ducks and geese, but not so much turkey.

There were a lot of wild turkeys across the northeast in those early days,

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