Thanksgiving Trivia Questions and Answers: 48 in Five Rounds

How to Run These Five Rounds

The questions are grouped by theme rather than by difficulty, because a Thanksgiving table rarely splits neatly into levels. A grandparent may know the Lions history cold while a middle schooler just covered the Pilgrims in class. Theme rounds let each person have a moment where they are the expert.

Each round takes roughly ten minutes if one person reads and teams write answers on paper. Read the question twice, give thirty seconds, then reveal the answer and the short note beside it. The notes are there so the reveal teaches something instead of ending the conversation.

A few practical rules keep the game friendly:

• Play in teams of two to four, mixing ages at every table.
• Accept close answers when the note says the detail is approximate, such as "about half" or "around 90."
• Keep Round 5 for last. It is built from popular myths, so it produces the loudest reactions.
• Keep phones face down. The fun is in the debate, and the source list at the end is for the host.

Round 1: The 1621 Harvest Celebration

Almost everything we know about the 1621 event comes from one short letter. Plimoth Patuxet Museums publishes the text and explains its context, which is where these answers come from.

1. In what year did the harvest celebration at Plymouth, later called the "first Thanksgiving," take place? Answer: 1621.
2. Which Pilgrim wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the celebration? Answer: Edward Winslow, in a letter to a friend in England.
3. Winslow's letter was printed in 1622 in a pamphlet known today by what name? Answer: Mourt's Relation.
4. Which Wampanoag leader arrived with some 90 men? Answer: Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin.
5. How many days did the English entertain and feast their guests? Answer: Three days.
6. How many deer did the Wampanoag men hunt and present to the English leaders? Answer: Five. The museum describes the gift as essential to the diplomacy of the event.
7. How many men did the governor send out fowling before the celebration? Answer: Four. Winslow wrote that they killed enough fowl in one day to serve the company almost a week.
8. How many passengers sailed on the Mayflower? Answer: 102.
9. Roughly how many of those passengers were still alive at the harvest celebration? Answer: About half, listed by the museum as 24 men, five women and 24 children and teenagers.
10. Which tart native fruit was still in season that autumn, even though a sweetened sauce recipe for it would not appear in print for about another half century? Answer: Cranberries.

Round 2: How It Became a National Holiday

The holiday on the calendar today is the product of proclamations, a magazine editor's campaign and one very public argument about shopping days. The National Archives and the National Park Service document each step.

1. Which president issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a day of thanksgiving? Answer: George Washington.
2. Which body asked him to recommend that day? Answer: The first Federal Congress, through a resolution passed on September 28, 1789.
3. Whose 1863 proclamation began the regular yearly observance on the last Thursday of November? Answer: Abraham Lincoln's.
4. On what date did Lincoln issue that proclamation? Answer: October 3, 1863.
5. Which cabinet member actually penned the October 1863 proclamation? Answer: Secretary of State William Seward.
6. Which magazine editor spent years campaigning for a national day of thanksgiving? Answer: Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book.
7. Hale is also known as the author of which nursery rhyme? Answer: "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
8. In 1939, why did President Franklin D. Roosevelt move Thanksgiving a week earlier? Answer: Concern that a shorter Christmas shopping season could dampen the economic recovery.
9. How many states issued proclamations following Roosevelt's new date? Answer: 32. Another 16 kept the last Thursday, so for two years the country had two Thanksgivings.
10. Which Thursday of November did Congress finally fix as the federal holiday? Answer: The fourth Thursday.
11. On what date did Roosevelt sign that resolution? Answer: December 26, 1941.
12. Under that rule, what is the date of Thanksgiving in 2026? Answer: Thursday, November 26.

If the table wants something with more movement between rounds, our list of Thanksgiving games with full rules covers table and after-dinner games that need little more than paper, cups and a bowl.

Round 3: The Parade and the Football

For many households the morning belongs to the parade and the afternoon to the Lions. Macy's own newsroom and the Pro Football Hall of Fame supply these answers.

1. What was the Macy's parade originally called? Answer: The Macy's Christmas Parade.
2. In what year did the first Macy's parade march? Answer: 1924.
3. Which unusual participants from the Central Park Zoo joined the first parade? Answer: Real animals.
4. Which cartoon character became the first character balloon, and in what year? Answer: Felix the Cat, in 1927.
5. For which three years was the parade canceled, and why? Answer: 1942, 1943 and 1944, because of World War II.
6. Which NFL team started its Thanksgiving Day tradition in 1934? Answer: The Detroit Lions.
7. Who won that first 1934 Lions Thanksgiving game, and by what score? Answer: The Chicago Bears, 19 to 16.
8. Since 1966, the Dallas Cowboys have missed playing on the holiday in only two seasons. Name either year. Answer: 1975 or 1977.

Round 4: The Turkey and the Table

This is the round where younger players often beat the adults. The vocabulary comes from the National Wild Turkey Federation, the flight and history facts from the National Park Service, and the side-dish answers from the companies and growers behind them.

1. What is an adult male turkey called? Answer: A tom.
2. What is a young male turkey, under two years old, called? Answer: A jake.
3. What are baby wild turkeys called? Answer: Poults.
4. What is the dangling flap of skin above a turkey's beak called? Answer: The snood.
5. What is the fleshy flap hanging from a turkey's head called? Answer: The wattle.
6. True or false: wild turkeys can fly. Answer: True. The Park Service says they have been clocked flying up to 55 miles per hour, while domestic turkeys are virtually flightless.
7. How fast can a wild turkey run, according to the same source? Answer: Up to 25 miles per hour.
8. What is a flock of wild turkeys called in the Park Service article? Answer: A rafter.
9. Which Europeans were impressed enough by turkeys in the 1500s to bring some back to Europe? Answer: The Spanish.
10. Who created green bean casserole at Campbell's in Camden, New Jersey, in 1955? Answer: Dorcas Reilly.
11. What was the dish's original name? Answer: Green Bean Bake. Her recipe card now belongs to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
12. Cranberries are one of only three commonly cultivated fruits native to North America. Name the other two. Answer: Blueberries and Concord grapes.

Round 5: Myths and Tiebreakers

Each question here targets something many people believe. Ask for a simple true or false first, then award a bonus point to any team that can explain the real story.

1. True or false: the Pilgrims called their 1621 celebration "the first Thanksgiving." Answer: False. The label came from Alexander Young, who added it as a footnote when he published Winslow's account in 1841.
2. True or false: the eyewitness account lists turkey on the menu. Answer: False. It mentions only venison and wildfowl. The museum calls turkey probable, not recorded.
3. True or false: Harry Truman started the presidential turkey pardon in 1947. Answer: False, as far as the records show. The Truman Library found no document, speech, clipping or photograph of Truman pardoning a turkey and says it cannot determine when the tradition began.
4. True or false: Benjamin Franklin formally proposed the turkey as the national symbol. Answer: False. The idea comes from a private letter to his daughter mocking the seal of the Society of the Cincinnati, which he thought looked more like a turkey than an eagle.
5. Tiebreaker: on what date is Canadian Thanksgiving in 2026? Answer: Monday, October 12. Closest guess wins if nobody gets it exactly.

Scoring Notes for a Mixed-Age Room

Give one point per correct answer and half a point for a near miss on numbers, such as naming 90 men instead of "some 90." For true or false questions in Round 5, the explanation bonus matters more than the true or false point, because it rewards the person who actually knows the history.

If children are playing, let them answer Round 4 first before adults confer. Turkey vocabulary is short and memorable, and hearing "poult" from a seven-year-old tends to get the biggest laugh of the evening. For older teens, Round 2 works well as a head-to-head against a parent.

When a question sparks an argument, read the short note aloud and move on. The source list below is there so the host can back up any answer later, not so the table spends ten minutes on one date. If the group enjoys the format and wants a longer general quiz for another night, our set of fun trivia questions for adults uses the same answer-and-note style.

Short on time? A twenty-minute version still works. Take the first five questions of Rounds 1 and 2, the parade half of Round 3 and all of Round 5. That mix keeps the history, the morning traditions and the myths, which are the parts people tend to repeat at the table afterward. Save the turkey vocabulary for the children's table or for dessert, when attention is lower and short answers land better.

A final tip: write the answers on a separate sheet before guests arrive, and keep that sheet with whoever reads. It is the easiest way to stop the reader from giving away an answer by tone of voice.