10 LISTS OF TEN FOR THANKSGIVING : 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Thanksgiving : (Hint: It Pays to Be a Governor or a U.S. President)

1 In classical times, the Romans gave thanks to Ceres--the goddess of grain--in a festival known as the Cerealia. All in all, it’s a lucky thing we celebrate Turkey Day instead of Cereal Day.

2 Upon landing at Plymouth, the Pilgrims were met by Squanto, a friendly English-speaking Wampanoag. Squanto taught the survivors how to plant corn and net fish and helped negotiate a support pact with the local chief. Fifty-four years later, the Pilgrims’ descendants repaid the favor with the 11-year King Philip’s War, which devastated the Wampanoag and other New England tribes.

3 For what has come to be known as the first Thanksgiving get-together (in October, 1621), Pilgrim hunters brought wild turkeys but also wood pigeons, partridges, geese, ducks, clams, eels and fish. The Wampanoag brought five deer. Mmmmm , roast wood pigeon with all the trimmings.

4 After the Pilgrims weathered a drought and other adversities of life in 1623, Gov. William Bradford proclaimed a day with explicitly religious overtones, to “render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.”

5 Thanksgiving still wasn’t catching on, although by the 18th Century the governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire were proclaiming an annual autumn celebration of prayer and feasting. In the 19th Century, the tradition spread across the upper Midwest, but it did not take hold in the South.

6 President James Madison declared a special Thanksgiving for peace in 1815 following the War of 1812. This, after George (Mr. Thanksgiving) Washington proclaimed a day of thanks in 1778 for the signing of treaties with France, and again on Nov. 26, 1789, to mark the adoption of the Constitution--the latter being the first official national Thanksgiving Day.

7 A driving force to establish a national Thanksgiving Day was Sara Josepha Hale, editor of the magazine, “Godey’s Lady’s Book.” In nearly 20 years of campaigning during the mid-19th Century, she urged governors and Presidents to consider the holiday as a means of promoting national unity. But she thought that Thanksgiving should be celebrated on July 4.

8 After 240 years, President Abraham Lincoln finally brought some law and order to Thanksgiving, proclaiming the last Thursday in November to be an annual day of thanksgiving. His declaration in October, 1863, coming at the height of the Civil War, called for a day of “Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”

9 Baseball was the sport of choice on chilly Thanksgiving afternoons in the late 1860s and 1870s, but football came into its own during the 1880s. College teams had the holiday gridiron to themselves until 1934, when the Detroit Lions held the first professional Thanksgiving game. All this was good news for those who thought the baseball playoffs dragged on too long anyway.

10 Hoping to put a dent in the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreed in 1938 that Thanksgiving be celebrated one week earlier to lengthen the Christmas shopping season (as if there were a lot of spare dimes around). He rescinded this unpopular move, and three years later, Congress passed Public Law No. 379, establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the official date of Thanksgiving. America’s retailers, meanwhile, moved the start of Christmas shopping back to Labor Day.