Thanksgiving: Where Tom Turkey meets Benjamin Franklin

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This time next week, the 96% of you who say you celebrate Thanksgiving may be still recovering from a food coma, shopping some Black Friday deals or planning your Small Business Saturday shopping route. Maybe you’ll decide you want some environmental inspiration and will #OptOutside.

Whatever your scenario, WalletHub put together a list of fast facts for the holiday of giving thanks, and we’re here to share some giblets, er, tidbits with you. Keep them in your back pocket for when there’s a lull in the Thanksgiving dinner conversation.

The turkey that’s the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving feast? That’s an estimated $640 million industry during the holiday.

If you’re planning to feed nine people in addition to yourself, plan to spend about $50 for the meal. That's a much better deal than you got if you were eating at New York City’s Old Homestead Steakhouse last year. Then you would’ve forked over about 1,550 times that much. And yes, that $76,000 tab does include more than just the $105 per-pound organic turkey with the gravy infused with $3,300 Pappy Van Winkle bourbon.

Hamilton tickets and a night overlooking Central Park notwithstanding, the average spending total over the five-day Thanksgiving period is estimated at $335 per person. Between transportation and food costs and the kickoff to the holiday shopping season, we’re a little surprised the amount isn’t higher.

Retailers generally fare well during the Thanksgiving holiday, with 58% of the people who are buying gifts choosing clothing or accessories and 38% of all shoppers buying toys.

Plenty of people will be shopping on the internet, skipping the chaos of in-person Black Friday shopping. Online shopping over the five-day Thanksgiving period totaled $19.62 billion in 2017.

All told, more than 174 million people did some shopping in that period last year, and 60% of them said the deals are what drove them to the cash register or online cart.

Take a look at some of the WalletHub stats, and click to see the broader list, with things like football and history and how much weight we’ll all be gaining.