30 Thanksgiving Trivia Questions & Answers for Family Fun

Thanksgiving dinner may be the main event, but eventually everyone reaches the point where the turkey has been carved, the pie has disappeared, and nobody is quite ready to leave the table.

That is an excellent time for Thanksgiving trivia.

A good trivia game works with almost any gathering because it requires very little preparation. You do not need a board, elaborate supplies, or another trip to the store. Read the questions aloud, divide everyone into teams if you have a large group, and see who knows the most about Thanksgiving history, holiday food, parades, football, movies, and some of the wonderfully strange traditions that have accumulated around the day.

These 30 questions include easy ones that children can answer alongside a few that may stump the adults.

The history questions have also been written carefully. The 1621 gathering at Plymouth is often casually called the “first Thanksgiving,” but Thanksgiving history is much more complicated than the familiar school-pageant version. The questions below refer more precisely to the 1621 harvest gathering involving English colonists and Wampanoag people rather than treating it as the simple beginning of Thanksgiving as we know it today.

Ready?

Put the phones away.

No searching.

And if Grandma knows every answer, somebody else is doing the dishes.

🦃 Thanksgiving History Trivia

Question 1

In what year did the famous harvest gathering involving Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag people take place?

A. 1492
B. 1607
C. 1621
D. 1776

Question 2

Approximately how long did the 1621 harvest gathering last?

A. One afternoon
B. Two days
C. Three days
D. One week

Question 3

Which Wampanoag leader, also widely known by the title Massasoit, attended the 1621 gathering?

A. Ousamequin
B. Metacom
C. Tisquantum
D. Hobbamock

Question 4

About how many Wampanoag men accompanied Ousamequin to the 1621 harvest gathering?

A. 10
B. 25
C. 50
D. 90

Question 5

What did the Wampanoag participants bring to the gathering after hunting?

A. Five deer
B. Ten turkeys
C. A basket of cranberries
D. Several bushels of corn

Question 6

Which Plymouth colonist left the surviving eyewitness account describing the 1621 harvest celebration?

A. William Bradford
B. Edward Winslow
C. Miles Standish
D. John Alden

📜 Thanksgiving Traditions & Calendar Trivia

Question 7

Which U.S. president issued a proclamation in 1863 calling for a national Thanksgiving observance during the Civil War?

A. George Washington
B. Abraham Lincoln
C. Ulysses S. Grant
D. Theodore Roosevelt

Question 8

Which influential magazine editor spent years campaigning for a national Thanksgiving holiday and wrote to Abraham Lincoln about it in 1863?

A. Louisa May Alcott
B. Harriet Beecher Stowe
C. Sarah Josepha Hale
D. Emily Dickinson

Question 9

In what year did federal legislation establish Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November?

A. 1863
B. 1901
C. 1929
D. 1941

Question 10

Why did President Franklin D. Roosevelt move Thanksgiving earlier in November in 1939?

A. To avoid bad winter weather
B. To lengthen the Christmas shopping season
C. To match Canadian Thanksgiving
D. To avoid a football conflict

Question 11

When is Thanksgiving observed in Canada?

A. The first Monday in September
B. The first Thursday in October
C. The second Monday in October
D. The fourth Thursday in November

Question 12

Which president firmly established the modern annual presidential turkey-pardon tradition in 1989?

A. John F. Kennedy
B. Ronald Reagan
C. George H. W. Bush
D. Bill Clinton

🥧 Thanksgiving Food Trivia

Question 13

Who created the famous Campbell’s green bean casserole recipe?

A. Julia Child
B. Dorcas Reilly
C. Betty Crocker
D. Irma Rombauer

Question 14

In what year was Campbell’s green bean casserole created?

A. 1935
B. 1945
C. 1955
D. 1965

Question 15

What was green bean casserole originally called?

A. Holiday Bean Bake
B. Green Bean Bake
C. Mushroom Bean Supreme
D. Thanksgiving Bean Casserole

Question 16

According to the famous story behind the development of the Swanson TV dinner, what Thanksgiving food did the company have far too much of?

A. Mashed potatoes
B. Pumpkin pie
C. Frozen turkey
D. Cranberry sauce

Question 17

Approximately how much excess frozen turkey was involved in the famous Swanson TV dinner story?

A. 2 tons
B. 26 tons
C. 100 tons
D. 260 tons

Question 18

About how many TV dinners did Swanson sell during its first full year of production in 1954?

A. 100,000
B. 1 million
C. 10 million
D. 50 million

🎈 Thanksgiving Parade Trivia

Question 19

In what year did the Macy’s parade tradition begin in New York City?

A. 1904
B. 1924
C. 1944
D. 1964

Question 20

What was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade originally called?

A. Macy’s Harvest Parade
B. Macy’s Autumn Festival
C. Macy’s Christmas Parade
D. Macy’s Santa Claus March

Question 21

What unusual attractions appeared in the earliest Macy’s parade before giant character balloons became the signature feature?

A. Circus elephants from Ringling Bros.
B. Animals from the Central Park Zoo
C. Horse-drawn farm equipment
D. Boats from New York Harbor

Question 22

Which cartoon character is generally credited as the first giant character balloon in the Macy’s parade?

A. Mickey Mouse
B. Snoopy
C. Felix the Cat
D. Popeye

Question 23

Which Peanuts character has appeared in more Macy’s parade balloon versions than any other character in parade history?

A. Charlie Brown
B. Lucy
C. Woodstock
D. Snoopy

Question 24

Which U.S. city had a Thanksgiving parade beginning in 1920, four years before Macy’s parade began?

A. Boston
B. Chicago
C. Philadelphia
D. Baltimore

🏈 Thanksgiving Football Trivia

Question 25

Which NFL team began its famous Thanksgiving Day tradition in 1934?

A. Green Bay Packers
B. Detroit Lions
C. Chicago Bears
D. New York Giants

Question 26

Which NFL team joined the Thanksgiving tradition in 1966 and has since become another regular holiday host?

A. Dallas Cowboys
B. Kansas City Chiefs
C. Pittsburgh Steelers
D. Miami Dolphins

Question 27

In what year did the NFL add a regular third Thanksgiving game played at night?

A. 1986
B. 1996
C. 2006
D. 2016

🎬 Thanksgiving Movies & TV Trivia

Question 28

What unusual foods make up Charlie Brown’s makeshift feast in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

A. Pizza, french fries, and cookies
B. Toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks, and jelly beans
C. Sandwiches, potato chips, and pudding
D. Pancakes, cereal, and candy corn

Question 29

Which comic-strip creator wrote A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

A. Jim Davis
B. Charles M. Schulz
C. Bill Watterson
D. Matt Groening

Question 30

In the animated movie Free Birds, what do the two main turkeys attempt to do by traveling back in time?

A. Invent Thanksgiving
B. Find the first pumpkin pie
C. Get turkey off the Thanksgiving menu
D. Stop the Macy’s parade

✅ Thanksgiving Trivia Answers

1. 1621

The answer is C. 1621.

A harvest gathering took place at Plymouth in the autumn of 1621 involving English colonists and Wampanoag people. Although later generations popularly labeled this event the “First Thanksgiving,” that description can obscure a much longer history of Indigenous harvest, gratitude, and ceremonial traditions as well as other earlier European thanksgiving observances in North America.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian encourages families and educators to examine the familiar Thanksgiving story from Wampanoag perspectives rather than treating the traditional national myth as the complete history.

2. Three days

The answer is C. Three days.

Edward Winslow’s surviving description says the participants feasted and gathered for three days.

That certainly makes the modern Thanksgiving dinner look efficient.

3. Ousamequin

The answer is A. Ousamequin.

Ousamequin was the important Wampanoag leader often identified in English historical records by the title Massasoit.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums describes him as the great sachem of the Pokanoket and notes his presence at the 1621 harvest gathering.

4. About 90

The answer is D. 90.

According to Edward Winslow’s account, Ousamequin arrived with approximately 90 men.

Their presence made the Wampanoag group substantially larger than the surviving English population participating in the gathering.

5. Five deer

The answer is A. Five deer.

Winslow recorded that the Wampanoag men went hunting and returned with five deer, which they presented to the English leadership.

That detail comes directly from the surviving eyewitness account, making venison one of the foods we can say with considerable confidence was associated with the gathering.

Turkey is much less certain as the star of the meal.

6. Edward Winslow

The answer is B. Edward Winslow.

Winslow’s brief account of the harvest gathering appeared in a work later known as Mourt’s Relation.

His description is exceptionally important because it is the only known eyewitness account describing the event.

Given how large Thanksgiving became in American culture, remarkably little contemporary writing about the 1621 gathering survives.

7. Abraham Lincoln

The answer is B. Abraham Lincoln.

On October 3, 1863, during the Civil War, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for the last Thursday of November to be observed as a day of thanksgiving.

Presidents subsequently continued issuing annual Thanksgiving proclamations.

Thanksgiving’s eventual position on the national calendar therefore developed over centuries rather than beginning with a single meal in 1621.

8. Sarah Josepha Hale

The answer is C. Sarah Josepha Hale.

Hale was the influential editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and spent years advocating for a nationwide Thanksgiving observance.

In September 1863, she wrote directly to Lincoln urging him to establish a national Thanksgiving.

Her campaign is one of the most important—and often overlooked—chapters in the creation of the modern American holiday.

9. 1941

The answer is D. 1941.

Congress passed legislation establishing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in December 1941.

That is why Thanksgiving can fall between November 22 and November 28.

10. To lengthen the Christmas shopping season

The answer is B. To lengthen the Christmas shopping season.

In 1939, Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving earlier in an effort to provide retailers with more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas during the later years of the Great Depression.

The decision proved controversial.

Different states did not all observe Thanksgiving on the same date, and critics even jokingly referred to the shifted holiday as Franksgiving.

Congress eventually stepped in, leading to the fourth-Thursday rule established in 1941.

11. The second Monday in October

The answer is C. The second Monday in October.

Canadian Thanksgiving occurs substantially earlier than Thanksgiving in the United States.

The Canadian holiday is observed on the second Monday in October.

So if you are invited to a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner and arrive in late November, there is a good chance you are extremely late.

12. George H. W. Bush

The answer is C. George H. W. Bush.

Presidents had spared Thanksgiving turkeys before 1989, and John F. Kennedy famously declined to eat a presented turkey in 1963.

But the White House Historical Association identifies George H. W. Bush’s 1989 ceremony as the moment that firmly established the modern annual presidential turkey-pardon tradition.

Bush explicitly announced that the turkey had been granted a presidential pardon.

The ceremony has continued annually since then.

13. Dorcas Reilly

The answer is B. Dorcas Reilly.

Dorcas Reilly was a Campbell’s Test Kitchen employee who created what became one of America’s most recognizable holiday side dishes.

The recipe combines green beans, condensed cream of mushroom soup, and crispy fried onions with a few additional ingredients.

Its simplicity was intentional.

The goal was to create something home cooks could prepare with inexpensive ingredients they were likely to recognize.

14. 1955

The answer is C. 1955.

Green bean casserole was created in the Campbell’s Test Kitchen in 1955.

Decades later, it remains so closely associated with Thanksgiving that many families would consider its absence from the table a genuine holiday emergency.

15. Green Bean Bake

The answer is B. Green Bean Bake.

The dish eventually became universally known as green bean casserole, but its original name was Green Bean Bake.

“Casserole” apparently had much greater staying power.

16. Frozen turkey

The answer is C. Frozen turkey.

According to the most famous account of the development of Swanson’s TV dinner, the company was left with an enormous surplus of frozen turkey after Thanksgiving in 1953.

That problem helped inspire the idea of packaging turkey with side dishes in divided aluminum trays.

Thanksgiving leftovers accidentally helped launch an entire category of convenience food.

17. About 260 tons

The answer is D. 260 tons.

Smithsonian recounts the famous story that Swanson had approximately 260 tons of frozen turkey left after Thanksgiving.

That is considerably more leftovers than even the most ambitious turkey sandwich could handle.

The company reportedly kept the refrigerated railroad cars moving while employees figured out what to do with all of it.

18. About 10 million

The answer is C. 10 million.

Swanson sold approximately 10 million TV dinner trays in 1954, the product’s first full year.

The concept arrived at exactly the right cultural moment as television ownership was rapidly expanding in American homes.

The earliest Swanson dinner featured turkey along with familiar side dishes, linking the new convenience meal directly to its Thanksgiving origin story.

19. 1924

The answer is B. 1924.

The first Macy’s parade took place on Thanksgiving Day in 1924.

Macy’s employees marched through New York toward the Herald Square store, accompanied by floats, performers, and live animals.

The enormous character balloons most people associate with the parade arrived a few years later.

20. Macy’s Christmas Parade

The answer is C. Macy’s Christmas Parade.

Although it took place on Thanksgiving, the original event was called the Macy’s Christmas Parade.

That makes sense when you consider its purpose: the parade helped announce the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and culminated with Santa Claus.

Thanksgiving and Christmas retailing have been closely acquainted for a very long time.

21. Animals from the Central Park Zoo

The answer is B. Animals from the Central Park Zoo.

Early Macy’s parades featured live zoo animals before giant balloons became the spectacle everyone recognizes today.

Imagine trying to manage that parade route now.

The balloon handlers suddenly seem to have the easier job.

22. Felix the Cat

The answer is C. Felix the Cat.

Felix the Cat appeared as one of the earliest—and generally credited first—giant character balloons in 1927.

Those early balloons were quite different from the technologically sophisticated characters floating through Manhattan today.

For several years, balloons were even released into the sky after the parade, with rewards offered for their return.

That tradition ended after the practice created some rather obvious safety problems.

23. Snoopy

The answer is D. Snoopy.

According to the Library of Congress’s history of the parade, Snoopy holds the distinction of appearing in the most different balloon versions.

The Peanuts character has been reinvented repeatedly for the parade over the decades.

Given Snoopy’s remarkable ability to become a World War I flying ace, astronaut, novelist, scout, and almost anything else Charles Schulz imagined, becoming a parade-balloon champion seems appropriate.

24. Philadelphia

The answer is C. Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving parade tradition began in 1920, making it older than Macy’s 1924 New York parade.

Detroit and New York developed their famous Thanksgiving parades a few years later.

So although Macy’s may be the parade most familiar to a national television audience, it was not America’s first major Thanksgiving parade.

25. Detroit Lions

The answer is B. Detroit Lions.

The Lions first played on Thanksgiving in 1934, when team owner George A. Richards scheduled a holiday game against the Chicago Bears to generate attention for the relatively new Detroit franchise.

The idea worked.

The Lions eventually became a Thanksgiving fixture and have played on the holiday every year since 1945.

For millions of households, a Detroit football game is now as traditional as the turkey.

26. Dallas Cowboys

The answer is A. Dallas Cowboys.

Dallas joined the Thanksgiving tradition in 1966.

The Cowboys have hosted Thanksgiving games nearly every season since then, missing the holiday in 1975 and 1977 before returning permanently in 1978.

Together, Detroit and Dallas became the two teams most strongly associated with Thanksgiving football.

27. 2006

The answer is C. 2006.

For many years, Thanksgiving NFL viewing largely revolved around the Lions and Cowboys.

In 2006, the league added a third game in the evening that could feature other teams.

That transformed Thanksgiving into an even longer football marathon.

Depending on your family, that sentence either sounds wonderful or mildly threatening.

28. Toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks, and jelly beans

The answer is B. Toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks, and jelly beans.

Charlie Brown is unexpectedly expected to host Thanksgiving dinner after Peppermint Patty invites herself and several friends over.

Charlie Brown cannot exactly cook a turkey.

So Snoopy and the gang improvise.

The resulting menu includes toast, popcorn, pretzel sticks, and jelly beans, creating one of television’s least traditional Thanksgiving meals.

Peppermint Patty is not impressed.

Millions of viewers have loved it ever since.

29. Charles M. Schulz

The answer is B. Charles M. Schulz.

Schulz created the Peanuts comic strip and wrote A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which debuted in 1973.

The special brought Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Franklin, and other familiar characters together for one of the Peanuts gang’s enduring holiday stories.

If your family wants more Thanksgiving viewing after the trivia game, see our 12 Best Thanksgiving Movies for Kids & Families.

30. Get turkey off the Thanksgiving menu

The answer is C. Get turkey off the Thanksgiving menu.

That is the wonderfully ridiculous central idea behind the 2013 animated comedy Free Birds.

Two turkeys travel back in time to 1621 in an attempt to alter history so that turkeys will no longer become Thanksgiving dinner.

It should go without saying that Free Birds is a time-travel comedy involving talking turkeys and not a history lesson.

But as Thanksgiving trivia goes, it makes a wonderfully appropriate final question.

🏆 How to Turn the Trivia Into a Thanksgiving Game

For a small family gathering, simply take turns reading questions aloud and let everyone write their answers on paper.

For a larger group, divide everyone into teams.

Mix adults and children rather than creating one children’s team and one adult team. The younger players may know Charlie Brown and Free Birds, while older relatives may dominate questions about presidential proclamations and football history.

Award one point for each correct answer.

You can also give a bonus point whenever a team can provide an interesting related fact before hearing the explanation.

If two teams finish with the same score, use the closest-answer question below as a tiebreaker.

Tiebreaker: Approximately how many tons of leftover frozen turkey are involved in the famous story about the creation of the Swanson TV dinner?

Closest answer wins.

And yes, the answer is still an astonishing 260 tons.

👧 Make Thanksgiving Trivia Easier for Kids

Younger children do not need to answer the same way adults do.

Read the multiple-choice options and let them choose.

You could also give younger players two possible answers instead of four.

Another option is to pair every child with an adult and let them discuss each answer quietly before submitting it.

The game should give children a chance to participate rather than becoming an hour-long demonstration of how much Grandpa knows about Detroit Lions history.

Questions about Charlie Brown, parade balloons, food, and movies are particularly accessible for younger players.

The more detailed history questions give adults and older children a challenge.

📚 Use the History Questions as Conversation Starters

Thanksgiving trivia can be fun without repeating the oversimplified history many adults learned in elementary school.

The 1621 harvest gathering really happened.

Edward Winslow really wrote about it.

Ousamequin and approximately 90 Wampanoag men really attended, and the Wampanoag participants brought five deer.

But the familiar story that reduces Thanksgiving history to friendly Pilgrims and Native Americans happily inventing a national holiday together leaves out a great deal.

Native peoples already had longstanding traditions related to gratitude, harvests, seasonal gatherings, and relationships with the land.

The political relationship between the Wampanoag and English colonists was also more complex than a single dinner-table story suggests, and the decades following 1621 brought enormous disruption, colonial expansion, disease, violence, and war.

A family trivia game does not need to become a history lecture.

But accurate wording gives children a much better starting point for learning more.

🦃 Thanksgiving Is Full of Unexpected History

One of the most entertaining things about Thanksgiving trivia is how many familiar traditions are much newer than people assume.

Green bean casserole dates to 1955.

The Macy’s parade began in 1924.

Detroit’s Thanksgiving football tradition dates to 1934.

Dallas joined in 1966.

The modern annual presidential turkey pardon dates to 1989.

And frozen Thanksgiving leftovers helped inspire one of the most iconic convenience foods of twentieth-century America.

The modern Thanksgiving celebration is really a collection of traditions created at many different points in American history.

Some are solemn.

Some are commercial.

Some are culinary.

Some involve football.

And at least one involves Charlie Brown trying to serve jelly beans for dinner.

That combination is part of what makes the holiday so interesting.

❤️ End the Game With Something Everyone Knows

After thirty questions, someone at the table will probably claim the questions were unfair.

Someone else will insist an answer should count because it was “basically right.”

One team may demand a recount.

This is normal Thanksgiving trivia behavior.

Declare the winners, give them the ceremonial last piece of pie if there is one left, and move on to the next part of the holiday.

You can follow the game with 15 Thanksgiving Jokes for Kids, try the Thanksgiving Day Word Search Puzzle, or settle onto the couch with one of our Thanksgiving movie guides.

The real point of the game is not determining who knows the most obscure facts.

It is giving everyone another reason to remain around the table for a little longer.

That might be one Thanksgiving tradition worth keeping.