Thanksgiving is an important holiday in American history. It is a time for families and friends to gather around, stuff their faces with a traditional Thanksgiving meal, watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Thanksgiving football game, and prepare for the horrors of Black Friday. So to prepare for this day of thanks here are some facts about this wonderful holiday:

1. Not sure if they actually ate turkey.

It is not proven whether or not there was turkey eaten at the first Thanksgiving. It is more commonly thought that seafood was served along with some type of poultry.

2. The first known Thanksgiving feast in North America was celebrated by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.

In 1541, the Spanish Conquistador Coronado held a Thanksgiving type of celebration with a group of natives in what is now Texas.

3. Contrary to popular belief, Native Americans did not eat cranberries.

They did, however, find them extremely useful for dying fabric and decorating pottery.

4. Thanksgiving is also celebrated as a National Day of Mourning.

Every Thanksgiving, a group of Native Americans and their supporters gather on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning.

5. The first Thanksgiving Day parade was not sponsored by Macy's.

The idea of a store-sponsored Thanksgiving parade did not originate with Macy’s, but with Philadelphia’s Gimbel Brothers Department Store, which first staged a Thanksgiving procession in 1920 with 50 people, 15 cars, and a fireman dressed as Santa Claus who ushered in the Christmas shopping season.

6. Yale and Princeton first played on Thanksgiving in 1876.

Yale won the first ever Thanksgiving football game and the tradition has grown ever since.

7. The celebration between the European settlers and the Wampanoag Indians lasted three days.

No one was rushing off for Black Friday shopping, clearly.

8. About 99.8 percent of imported turkeys come from Canada.

So we can thank your neighbors to the north for our Thanksgiving meal.

9. At a time when most holidays were religious, Thanksgiving feasts were oddly secular.

This was a celebration of cooperation between two cultures with two very different religious beliefs.

10. Americans eat roughly 535 million pounds of turkey on Thanksgiving.

There are less than 320 million people living in America so feel free to eat as much as you want this Thanksgiving. It's totally acceptable.