Football games have been played at Thanksgiving since the late 1800s
Though the first national Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by Washington in 1789, it did not become a regular holiday in the U.S. until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November should be celebrated as Thanksgiving. Football games then became a part of the celebration. The first football game on Thanksgiving Day was played in the mid-1870s when Princeton played Yale in Hoboken, N.J.
In 1934, the first NFL football game also took place when the Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears. The Lions have gone on to play on Thanksgiving Day except when the team was called away to serve during World War II. The Dallas Cowboys have hosted a game almost every year since 1966. To date, scores of college football teams play on or immediately after Thanksgiving.
