An average person may consume 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving

By: Jose Sepulveda

If you're counting down the days until Thanksgiving, know that there are many more numbers where that came from. Here's the skinny on the feast-friendly holiday.

Speaking of food, according to a National Turkey Federation survey, a whopping 88 percent of Americans consume turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

If football is the main event for your Turkey Day, know that three NFL games will be played on Thanksgiving Day.

And it took magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale 36 years to get approval for an annual Thanksgiving holiday, according to CNN. There had been both national and local celebrations throughout the years, but it was President Abraham Lincoln who choses the fourth Thursday in November for Thanksgiving in 1863.

Related: Best sides for Thanksgiving

79 percent of Americans say eating Thanksgiving leftovers is more important than eating the actual Thanksgiving meal. (And they are correct.)

The average number of calories you might consume on Thanksgiving, according to the Calorie Control Council, is 4,500. That's almost two days worth of food!

Related: Holiday dishes under 250 calories

There are more than 10,000 people who participate in the Thanksgiving Day Parade, with 3.5 million people watching in the streets of Manhattan and more than 50 million tuning it at home.

The National Turkey Federation says about 46 million turkeys were eaten in the U.S. on Thanksgiving in 2012.

There were an estimated 135.8 million people who took advantage of Thanksgiving weekend holiday sales in 2015. That's more than one-third of the American population!

And 237.5 million is the number of turkeys raised in the United States in 2014. Maybe we should worry about a turkey uprising, because that's not that many fewer turkeys than there are people in America.

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