With less than three weeks until Thanksgiving, we turned to WalletHub to help Americans decide where to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast without breaking the bank — and for some fun facts about the holiday that range from cost of Thanksgiving dinner and share of delayed flights to volunteer opportunities per capita and forecasted precipitation.
Thanksgiving Fun Facts:
- $313 – Average person’s spending over the five-day Thanksgiving period.
- 10 Hrs. 33 Mins. – Length of time the average American male would need to spend on the treadmill to burn the 4,500 calories consumed at the average Thanksgiving meal.
- $552+ Million – Estimated amount Americans spend on Thanksgiving turkeys each year, with 46 million turkeys killed for the holiday.
- $19 Million – Amount of property loss caused by residential building fires each Thanksgiving.
- 53% – Share of people celebrating Thanksgiving who are dreading having to talk politics at the dinner table.
One more fun fact: It doesn’t cost too much to make a Thanksgiving feast for your family – around $50 on average for 10 people.
To view the full list of fun facts, click here. Not to be lost in the fun facts, the NFL’s three-game Thanksgiving slate earned nearly 79 million combined viewers last year, and we spent more than $6.2 billion on Black Friday shopping – on top of the billions we spent preparing for Thanksgiving itself, according to WalletHub Managing Editor John S Kiernan.
WalletHub, a personal-finance website, also released more fun facts: its 2019’s Best Places to Go for Thanksgiving. Following are the to 10.
1. St. Paul, MN
2. Scottsdale, AZ
3. Virginia Beach, VA
4. Orlando, FL
5. Denver, CO
6. Gilbert, AZ
7. Louisville, KY
8. Raleigh, NC
9. Irvine, CA
10. Norfolk, VA
That first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Mass., was designed to give thanks. Since then the day has morphed into a day of football, eating and shopping.
An estimated 34 million people planned to shop on Thanksgiving day in 2018, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
Image Sources
- Turkey: Image by Alvin Wirthlin from Pixabay