It’s finally almost Thanksgiving, or regretfully almost Thanksgiving if you are cooking for a small village. Cooking and entertaining simultaneously is a job for pros, a task most parents can master with ease considering multi-tasking is just part of the routine. To make you the star of the party with all kids (VIP guests), here are some kid-friendly Thanksgiving facts they might not have learned in school:

• The first Thanksgiving feast took place in 1621 and lasted three entire days.
• That first feast was to celebrate a bountiful harvest after the Pilgrims traveled to America and began growing their own crops to survive.
• The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade took place in New York City in 1924. The idea originally came from Macy’s department store rival Gimbal’s, whose parade started in 1920.
• The first balloon used in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was Felix the Cat in 1927. When the parade first began, live animals were used from the Central Park Zoo in lieu of balloons.
• Snoopy has been in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade more than any other balloon or cartoon creature.
• Sara Josepha Hale, who penned “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” convinced Abraham Lincoln to instate Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
• In 1863, Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November should be the national day for Thanksgiving, or a day for “general blessings.”
• Every year, the President of the United States pardons one turkey who will live out the remainder of its life on an animal sanctuary. This tradition was started by President Truman in 1947. President Obama has even been known to pardon two turkeys during his presidency.

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