A convert to Thanksgiving
Laurent Bechir / Benny chocolate turkey / Flickr
I have just experienced my first Thanksgiving in the US and, while I hate to agree with what everyone has been telling me for a long time, it was a really rather wonderful experience. I have always been a huge fan of Christmas and love the build up with planning presents, meals, decorating and worrying about what we are going to do once Mrs Patel closes and we can’t get our annual non-shedding tree from her. Thanksgiving did not need decorating and certainly no presents – just lots of eating and drinking and being surrounded by friends and family, all of whom wanted to be there. Chocolate turkey included. It had all the Christmas spirit without the commercialisation and was all the better for it.
As the UK has now taken Halloween to its heart and dropped Guy Fawkes Day (apart from large displays of Council fireworks sometime around the 5th of November), I am wondering if we shouldn’t also adopt Thanksgiving. We could give thanks for Puritans leaving our shores and settling overseas. I do rather miss bonfires in back gardens and fireworks being let off everywhere. I am sure its demise is due to stringent health and safety laws introduced at least in part to prevent children being burnt and maimed in stupid accidents. That could be another reason to give thanks: let’s feed up the children with as much sugar as they can take, dress them up in appalling outfits and send them out on the streets instead of burning and maiming them. Ah the delights of being parents!
The commercialisation of Thanksgiving happens straight after the event with Black Friday. It’s called that because it is when shops supposedly make a profit and go from being in the red to the black. I was shocked to find that some of the big shops in New York opened at 6pm on Thanksgiving Thursday and stayed open until Friday night. Now that just seemed downright wrong. Couldn’t they have waited a few hours until Friday morning? I can understand non-Christians happy to work over Christmas but since everyone celebrated Thanksgiving who got the short straw to start work again at 6pm?
Being a convert to Thanksgiving, I am hoping to convince my family that we no longer need to do Christmas but I am not getting anywhere with that idea. A very grown up son is still insisting on having a Christmas stocking to open on Christmas morning. Oh well, looks as though it’s turkey twice a year from now on including a chocolate one!
Hear hear, Tara – Being an expat living in the States, I have to agree that thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. This year I hosted 18 friends in my tiny 10′ x 14′ living room/dining room. All furniture was removed, tables and chairs rented and a new sitting room was created on the deck with fairy lights and a fire pit to keep warm. I’m happy to say the rain held off till the next day!