Thanksgiving Trivia Questions and Answers

On this page

1. How to play Thanksgiving trivia
2. The 1621 harvest feast
3. How Thanksgiving became a national holiday
4. Turkey and Thanksgiving food trivia
5. Parade and football trivia
6. Easy Thanksgiving trivia for kids
7. Ways to mix it up
8. Where the answers come from
9. Questions hosts ask

Thanksgiving trivia fills the awkward stretch between “the bird needs another hour” and “who wants pie.” It works for a table of eight or a living room of thirty, and nobody has to get up.

Our printable version has all 26 grown-up questions as multiple choice, with room for your family’s name at the top.

How to play Thanksgiving trivia

You can run this as a written quiz or read it aloud. The written version is quieter and fairer; the read-aloud version is louder and more fun for mixed ages.

1. Split into teams of two to five. Mix the ages so every team has someone who remembers history class and someone who remembers football.
2. Hand each team one printed sheet and a pen, or put the quiz on the TV in play mode.
3. Read each question aloud and give teams about 20 seconds to agree on an answer.
4. Score one point per correct answer. For open-answer play (no choices), give a bonus point for any answer that’s close enough to make the table argue.
5. Read the answers and the little fun facts from the key once everyone’s done. That’s often the best part.

The full grown-up set takes 20 to 30 minutes. The kids’ set runs 10 to 15.

The 1621 harvest feast

The Plymouth colonists didn’t call their 1621 gathering “Thanksgiving.” Historians usually say “the 1621 harvest celebration,” and almost everything we know about it comes from two English sources: a letter by Edward Winslow and a later history by Governor William Bradford. The questions below stick to what those sources and the historians at Plimoth Patuxet Museums support.

1. In what year did the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag share the three-day harvest celebration now called the first Thanksgiving? 1621
2. Where did the Mayflower first drop anchor in November 1620? At the tip of Cape Cod, in today’s Provincetown Harbor. The Mayflower Compact was signed there before the colonists moved on to Plymouth in December.
3. About how many passengers sailed on the Mayflower? 102
4. Which Native nation’s people joined the 1621 harvest celebration? The Wampanoag
5. What was the name of the Wampanoag leader who came to the celebration? Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin
6. According to Edward Winslow’s letter, about how many men came with Massasoit? About 90. Winslow wrote “some ninety men.”
7. How many days did the celebration last? Three
8. What did the Wampanoag hunters bring to the feast, according to Winslow? Five deer
9. Which Patuxet man, who had learned English, helped the colonists plant corn and served as a translator? Tisquantum, better known as Squanto
10. Which colonist wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the celebration? Edward Winslow. His letter was printed in 1622 in the book now called Mourt’s Relation.
11. Which of these was almost certainly NOT served in 1621: venison, wildfowl, corn or pumpkin pie? Pumpkin pie. The colony likely lacked enough butter and wheat flour for a crust.

How Thanksgiving became a national holiday

This round trips people up because the holiday moved around for more than 150 years before Congress pinned it down.

1. Which president issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation under the Constitution, in 1789? George Washington. He named Thursday, November 26, 1789.
2. Which magazine editor spent years writing to politicians, including a September 1863 letter to Abraham Lincoln, asking for a national Thanksgiving Day? Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. She’s also credited with the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
3. In 1863, which president proclaimed a national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November? Abraham Lincoln
4. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving a week earlier to stretch the holiday shopping season. What nickname did critics give it? “Franksgiving”
5. Since a 1941 law, Thanksgiving falls on which Thursday of November? The fourth. Roosevelt signed it on December 26, 1941.
6. In which city did police officers first call the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday”? Philadelphia, in the 1950s and 1960s. They meant the traffic jams and crowds, not store profits.

The National Archives has the full story of the 1939 date fight, including the 16 states that kept the old date anyway.

Turkey and Thanksgiving food trivia

1. In a 1784 letter to his daughter, which founding father called the turkey “a much more respectable bird” than the bald eagle? Benjamin Franklin. He never formally proposed the turkey as a national symbol; he was poking fun at a society that used the eagle as its badge.
2. What is the fleshy flap that hangs over a turkey’s beak called? The snood. The wattle is the one under its chin.
3. What is the scientific name for a bird’s wishbone? The furcula
4. Green bean casserole was created in 1955 in which company’s kitchen? Campbell’s. Home economist Dorcas Reilly developed it and called it “green bean bake.”

Parade and football trivia

1. In what year did the first Macy’s Thanksgiving parade march in New York City? 1924. It was billed as a Christmas parade, to kick off holiday shopping.
2. The first Macy’s parade had no giant balloons. What did it feature? Live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, including elephants, camels, bears and monkeys
3. Which NFL team first played on Thanksgiving in 1934 and turned it into a yearly tradition? The Detroit Lions
4. Which NFL team began its Thanksgiving home game tradition in 1966? The Dallas Cowboys
5. Which president held the first official turkey pardon ceremony, in 1989? George H. W. Bush

Easy Thanksgiving trivia for kids

These 15 work for roughly ages 5 to 10. Read them aloud for pre-readers, and let kids shout answers instead of writing them if the table can handle the noise. The printable kids’ version below turns them into multiple choice with three or four options each.

1. In which month do Americans celebrate Thanksgiving? November
2. On which day of the week is Thanksgiving? Thursday
3. What was the name of the Pilgrims’ ship? The Mayflower
4. In which state is Plymouth, where the Pilgrims settled? Massachusetts
5. What is a baby turkey called? A poult
6. What is a grown-up male turkey called? A tom. Females are called hens.
7. Which turkeys gobble: males, females or both? Males. Hens cluck and yelp instead.
8. True or false: wild turkeys can fly. True. They mostly walk, but they can fly short distances and sleep up in trees.
9. Cranberries got their name from which bird? The crane. The flower looks like a crane’s head and bill, so colonists called them craneberries.
10. Which orange squash gets baked into a favorite Thanksgiving pie? Pumpkin
11. Which country to the north of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in October? Canada, on the second Monday in October
12. In which big city does the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade take place? New York City
13. Which president, whose face is on the penny, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863? Abraham Lincoln
14. Which crop did the Wampanoag help the colonists grow? Corn
15. When two people pull a wishbone apart, who gets the wish? The person holding the bigger piece, according to tradition

Ways to mix it up

Kids versus grown-ups. Give the kids the easy set and the adults the hard set, then compare percentages instead of raw scores so the two sets are a fair fight.

One question per course. Say you’re hosting 12 people and dinner runs long. Read two questions between each dish, and keep a running score on a sticky note by the gravy.

Open answer for experts. Hide the multiple-choice options and read only the question. Some of these, like the snood and the furcula, get very hard without choices.

Large print for grandparents. Print at 100% scale (not “fit to page”) so the type stays as big as it can. For a whole senior group, our printable games for seniors have larger formats.

Want more than trivia for the day? Our list of Thanksgiving games for the whole family covers bingo, word games and games for the kids’ table. If your crowd likes a team showdown more than a quiz, try the survey game questions; there’s a holiday round in there. You’ll find everything for the season in our Thanksgiving games section.

Where the answers come from

We checked each answer against a primary source or a museum, archive or reference that cites one. The 1621 details come from Winslow’s letter as published by Plimoth Patuxet Museums and the Pilgrim Hall Museum. Washington’s proclamation is held by George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and Franklin’s turkey letter is on Founders Online from the National Archives.

Where historians disagree or the record is thin, we left the question out. That’s why you won’t find “What did the Pilgrims eat for dessert?” here.

Questions hosts ask

By the Party Game Book editors. Every game here is free to print for personal, classroom and non-commercial use. How we make and check our games.