Its an American original.
Thanksgiving and football go hand and hand with many high school rivals ending their seasons by playing each other and there are some college games. The NFL has been playing on Thanksgiving since 1920 with teams such as the Akron Pros hosting games. The Detroit Wolverines played a home game in 1928. In 1934, the Detroit Lions a franchise owned by a radio station operator G. A. Richards hosted a game because Richards thought he could entice Thanksgiving Day parade goers passing the stadium to stop in for a game. The holiday game worked until 1939 when Presidential politics changed the date of Thanksgiving. States were not uniformly in step with Franklin Roosevelt as to when to celebrate the holiday in 1939 and 1940. Roosevelt wanted the celebration a week earlier which would extend the Christmas shopping season to help the economy. That wrecked NFL continuity. After World War II ended in 1945, Detroit was given the sole NFL Thanksgiving game on an annual basis until 1965. The American Football League also played Thanksgiving football in the 1960s. The NFL now has three Thanksgiving games with Detroit and Dallas permanent daytime hosts and a rotating night game.
There were two exception to the Lions hold on Thanksgiving in 1950 and 1952. Today Arlington, Texas holds the annual Dallas Cowboys game and it is an event. But the first Dallas Thanksgiving day contest was a flop. Dallas was scheduled to host the 1952. But the Dallas owners returned the team to the NFL and the league owned Dallas Texans moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania for practice and played that home game in Akron, Ohio. The Texans franchise beat the Chicago Bears as the latter half of a high school-NFL Thanksgiving double header at the Rubber Bowl before a handful of people. The NFL once was just a step above semi-pro status.
