The first Thanksgiving started after the New England colonists survived a harsh winter after landing on Plymouth Rock. Although the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock in November of 1620, the first Thanksgiving or harvest celebration between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans wasn't until a year later, in November of 1621.

This was the event that now marks the first American day of Thanksgiving, even though many Indigenous peoples had long had rituals that included giving thanks and other European settlers had previously declared similar days of thanks – including one in Florida in 1565 and another along the Maine coast in 1607.

There were wild turkeys in North America in the 1620s, so there could have been turkeys at the first harvest festival, but turkeys were not the centerpiece of the meal.

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Enough history. The 2025 NFL season will feature familiar teams on Thanksgiving as the Lions and Cowboys continue their run. There will be three games on the holiday which continues a tradition started in 2006 and will feature a traditional matchup and some of the biggest stars in the league.

“Narratives of a harmonious Thanksgiving celebration were created to justify westward expansion and Manifest Destiny,” Jakober explains. The term “Manifest Destiny,” coined more than two centuries after the first Thanksgiving, was the belief that settlers were destined by God to expand across America and prosper.