This is rather long overdue, Thanksgiving (for those not in the know) being the fourth Thursday in November, but in between eating lots of food, buying furniture, moving house (more on that another time), welcoming my first house guests, turning 30, lots of birthday and Christmas meals out and flying home for Christmas I haven’t quite found time to write. But I took this photo of these delightful Oreo turkeys with the intention of showcasing them here so I knew I’d have to write it up eventually.
I don’t think I’m the only British person in the world not to understand Thanksgiving properly, I don’t just mean the history behind it but what it really means to people in the US. For us in the UK our festivities go straight from attempted summer barbecues and camping in the rain via a wishy washy attempt at Halloween straight into mince pies, fir trees, tinsel and Father Christmas appearing everywhere.
Christmas is my favourite time of the year and being an enormous glutton my favourite part of Christmas is the food; not just eating it but watching endless Christmas cookery programmes, reading the veggie Christmas food magazine, deciding what myself, my Mum and sister are going to rustle up in the kitchen from scratch and then sitting down around the table with my family and enjoying the feast while wearing silly hats and telling silly jokes from crackers. The Christmas crackers and vegetarianism aside this is the exact same spirit I think I uncovered in my two Thanksgiving dinner experiences (well I had to make sure I enjoyed it…).
I was treated to some rather wonderful fayre at both dinners including my first taste of pumpkin pie (I don’t think it quite tops Christmas pudding but I can understand its popularity nonetheless) and some ways of serving sweet potato that made me actually enjoy them.
I suppose the thing that still puzzled me about Thanksgiving was how it is still so popular when it falls roughly a month before Christmas. How do people have the energy to get together twice and do all the cooking, eating and digesting again after such a short time? I guess the surprising revelation for me in this regard is that not everyone in the US celebrates Christmas. This sounds like an incredibly small minded thing to write but it was genuinely a surprising thing for me. I come from a very ethnically and religiously diverse area of the UK so it’s not like I’m used to living in an all Christian community but whilst many of the non-Christians I know would never go to church over the period the majority of them generally do get together with their family, exchange gifts, eat too much turkey and fall asleep in front of the Queen’s speech in true British style. Having now met a number of people in the US who simply do nothing out of the ordinary on Christmas day except for not going to work I can see why Thanksgiving would remain as popular as it does.
And for anyone reading this who was hoping for me to list the reasons I’m thankful in a rather trite fashion I’m sorry to disappoint but here are some bonus images of my new local area from when I walked across the Ben Franklin Bridge a couple of weeks ago:
Once I’m back in the US after Christmas I’ll let you all have a nosy round my new apartment and home town!!
outofyorkshire 