Turkey: Turkey Talk

Turkey was more than just another food. By the mid-sixteenth century the English had adopted turkey as a substitute for Christmas goose. Episcopalians who settled in the southern colonies of America celebrated Christmas, and the turkey became the centerpiece of the Christmas dinner. Puritans who settled in Massachusetts did not celebrate Christmas, but they did observe days of thanksgiving. In New England, a thanksgiving feast was regularly observed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but little evidence of foods served at the dinners has survived. By the early nineteenth century, however, turkey was a common feature at thanksgiving meals. The phrase “Turkey Day” did not become a synonym for Thanksgiving until the late nineteenth century.