Do you observe Thanksgiving?

[CleverNickName]

Help me settle a bet. Do you observe the Thanksgiving holiday?

For the purpose of this poll, "observe Thanksgiving" means doing something special or out-of-the-ordinary specifically because of the holiday. Maybe you are going to enjoy a traditional dinner with family and friends, maybe you've decided to spend a rare day-off at home with your significant other and some wine, maybe you're taking advantage of the long weekend to go skiing...all of those are "observing Thanksgiving," in my opinion. It doesn't have to involve a roasted bird.

NOT observing Thanksgiving would be treating it like any other Thursday: get up, go to work, nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe you choose to ignore the holiday as a form of protest, maybe you like to work a few extra hours before Christmas, maybe don't really have a choice in the matter...but for whatever your reason, Thanksgiving is just a regular day for you.

Bonus: tell us about your Thanksgiving (if any). Favorite foods? Weird family traditions? Weird family members?

 

[dragoner]

My partner is part Apache, and 1st Thanksgiving I asked her what she wanted to do she said "Thanksgiving is the genocide of my people." So instead we usually go on another vacation.

 

[CleverNickName]

My spouse and my mother-in-law are both Native American (Chippewa Nation) so we have strong feelings about colonialism and genocide, and the American mythology of pilgrims and The Mayflower. But we also love to cook and eat and make merry, and we love having a holiday that is set aside just for family and friends to hang out and share a good meal. How could we square the two?

We decided that the hobbits have the right of it. We stock the pantry with pies, cheese, bread, wine, meats, and cakes and ale in the days leading up to the holiday. Then, we invite all our friends over to visit at any time of the day: arrive at 7:00 a.m. and you'll be just in time for Breakfast. Around 9:00 a.m. you'll get to enjoy Second Breakfast. Elevenses at 11:00, of course, and Luncheon at 1:00, and Afternoon Tea at 3:00, etc. We pull different foods out of the pantry, oven, and fridge at different times of the day, and the guests rotate out all day long as people drop by on their way to or from Wherever The Road Takes Them.

So technically we "observe thanksgiving" in the sense that we do something special on the last Thursday of November. But we celebrate food and friends and family through the lens of Hobbits and J.R.R. Tolkien...not the lens of sugarcoated American history.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

maybe you've decided to spend a rare day-off at home with your significant other and some wine, maybe you're taking advantage of the long weekend to go skiing...all of those are

I realize it's your poll, but I wouldn't count those as "observing Thanksgiving," since many people in the US have it off from work/school regardless of how they feel about it.

Similarly my family is not Jewish, but my kids get Yom Kippur off from school, so we normally do something fun that day. I do not consider it "observing Yom Kippur."

 

[Morrus]

No, of course not. It’s not a thing (except it’s a day when all my American co-workers suddenly vanish without warning). I get up and work just like any other day.

Turkey is for Xmas day, anyway. Just ask Charles Dickens.

 

[Reef]

We celebrate it in October, with the rest of Canada. Not sure if that counts or not...

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, in that 'gather with family and eat something specific' kind of way. Of course we do it earlier because in Canada things freeze earlier, or used to...

 

[Reynard]

Yes. "Observe" here means intentionally getting family together for a mostly traditional "feast." We do not make any special effort to express our "thanks" nor does it have any religious element.

 

[CleverNickName]

I realize it's your poll, but I wouldn't count those as "observing Thanksgiving," since many people in the US have it off from work/school regardless of how they feel about it.

Similarly my family is not Jewish, but my kids get Yom Kippur off from school, so we normally do something fun that day. I do not consider it "observing Yom Kippur."

Yeah, I can see that. Religious holidays are a very different kind of event, usually much older and with specific traditions engrained. I would never attempt to make such a reductive poll like this one for Yom Kippur or any other religious holiday.

But newer, non-religious holidays (like Thanksgiving) are all over the place, with traditions that vary not just from region to region, but sometimes from house to house. It would be impossible to create a poll to categorize all the different ways to observe such a holiday...so I had to draw the line somewhere.

 

[CleverNickName]

We celebrate it in October, with the rest of Canada. Not sure if that counts or not...