‘Tis the season, but not that season. It is the season of Charlie Brown and turkeys: Thanksgiving.
The official Thanksgiving holiday has been around for a long time, over 160 years to be specific. A very popular Thanksgiving Day tradition is football.
The first Thanksgiving football game was in 1876, when Yale and Princeton played on Thanksgiving for the first time. Yale won 2-0 in the cold and rainy weather, which made it seem more like a rugby match than a football game.
The first NFL Thanksgiving game was played in 1934, when the NFL sponsored the game between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears.
The Lions wanted to host the game mainly to promote their newly-founded franchise. The game was broadcast nationally on the radio, which helped the tradition grow. Ever since then, the Lions have played on Thanksgiving every year.
In 1960, the Dallas Cowboys joined the NFL. Six years later, their general manager, Tex Schramm, wanted more national publicity for the franchise and had the NFL schedule a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving, 1966. They played the Cleveland Browns and won 26-14.
The Cowboys, along with the Lions, have played in every Thanksgiving game since then, except for 1975 and 1977. In those two years, the NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, decided to give those games to the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the newer teams in the league at the time, to increase popularity for the team.
Aside from the two years in the ‘70s, the Cowboys and Lions have played on Thanksgiving every year. Every other team is not guaranteed to play on the holiday, but the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears are close, having played on the holiday 38 times. The Packers and the Lions have played on the holiday 22 times, making it the most common Thanksgiving game in NFL history.
Four years later, in 1981, John Madden debuted on the Thanksgiving scene. He had been the commentator for the game between the Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys. Madden and Pat Summerall went on to broadcast 22 straight Thanksgiving games. Madden also helped spark the popularity of the “Turducken,” a mix between a turkey, a duck, and a chicken.
