I am reading about early humans. It seems the essential elements of this holiday, while conjoined in American history and myth, have roots that stretch back to the beginning of our time on this planet.
Sharing food is, apparently, what distinguishes humans from their closest animal relatives (apes do not), and allowed us to care for children until (before video games) they could take care of themselves. Cooking allowed us to gain more nutrition from smaller meals and smaller guts. If Lang, Schmidt and Corduan are right, no doubt after taking down the latest Persian deer (the most popular food in camps in the Levant from some 350,000 BC on), butchering it with stone axes and cooking it over an open fire, early man and woman gave thanks to their Creator for the feast.
Archeologists have yet to find records of the football matches that followed. But clearly it is more the sport of meat-eaters and barbecuers than that kick-ball some people are yelling about now. Besides, it would have been easier for early man to make a ball for throwing or handing off than for rolling. And I suspect tackling was part of the match: these were folks, after all, who it seems sometimes took on the rhinoceros.