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Thanksgiving True or False Quiz

Thanksgiving True or False Quiz

True or False
Classic
10 questions
About 3 min
Up to 3 stars

Timed mode 15 seconds per question

This Thanksgiving true or false quiz serves up ten statements about the holiday, from the 1621 harvest gathering at Plymouth to cranberry bogs, parade history and what's really on your plate. Some are popular myths that get repeated around the table every November, and others are real facts that sound made up. Every answer comes with a quick explanation, so you'll have something fun to share before the turkey is carved.

Where Thanksgiving myths come from

Thanksgiving is one of the most storied holidays on the American calendar, yet much of what people picture comes from long after the 1600s. The familiar imagery largely took shape in the late 1800s and early 1900s, through magazine illustrations, paintings, greeting cards and school pageants. Those pictures were charming, but artists often filled in details from imagination, and their guesses got handed down as if they were history.

When you face a statement in this quiz, it helps to ask where a fact would have come from and who first wrote it down. Written records from early Plymouth are thin, with only a couple of firsthand accounts of that famous autumn gathering, so historians piece the story together from letters, archaeology and what we know about daily life in the colony. Food science and animal biology, on the other hand, can be tested in a kitchen or a field.

Fact-or-myth rounds work well for a holiday crowd because everyone can play, from the cousin who reads every history book to the uncle who remembers what he learned in grade school. Read each statement aloud after dinner, let the table vote with a thumbs up or down, then reveal the answer and the story behind it.

Thanksgiving True or False questions and answers

Show all 10 questions with answers (spoilers!)

Turkey makes you sleepy because it has far more tryptophan than other meats.
Answer: False
Turkey has about as much tryptophan as chicken or beef; a huge meal, carbs and drinks are likelier culprits.
Ripe cranberries can bounce.
Answer: True
Air pockets inside fresh cranberries make them bounce, and growers have long used bounce boards to sort out soft berries.
The Pilgrims dressed in all black, with big buckles on their hats and shoes.
Answer: False
Buckles came into fashion decades later, and Pilgrims often wore colors like brown, green, red and violet.
A male turkey's bare head can change color, from red to white or blue, when he gets excited.
Answer: True
Shifts in blood flow change the color of the bare skin, a useful signal during courtship and fights.
Pumpkin pie was served at the 1621 harvest feast in Plymouth.
Answer: False
The colonists probably had pumpkins, but they lacked the butter, flour and ovens needed for pie crust.
The wishbone is made of a bird's two collarbones fused together.
Answer: True
Scientists call it the furcula, and some dinosaurs had one too, long before turkeys existed.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been held every year since it began.
Answer: False
It was canceled from 1942 to 1944 during World War II, when rubber and helium were needed for the war.
The Wampanoag guests brought deer meat to the 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth.
Answer: True
A colonist's letter says the Native visitors went out, killed five deer and brought them to share.
Sweet potatoes and yams are two names for the same vegetable.
Answer: False
Most US "yams" are really sweet potatoes; true yams are starchy, rough-skinned roots from a different plant family.
Today's farm turkeys descend from birds first domesticated in Mexico.
Answer: True
Spanish explorers took them to Europe in the 1500s, and English colonists later brought their descendants back.

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