Do you observe Thanksgiving?

[BRayne]

As a veteran of hockey forums, it's the lack of Canadian Thanksgiving that was clearly the issue.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's not thanksgiving till I see Snoopy offering toast

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Similarly, Americans don't observe the UK's Guy Fawkes Night, Sweden's Walpurgis Night, or German Unity Day. Or 300 other important cultural holidays across the world. American Thanksgiving is just a local custom observed by about 5% of people.

Gotta say that American culture is getting more globalized over time. While it’s true we’re not seeing ALL of the world’s holidays celebrated here, more of them are. Especially the religious ones.

For example, for the first time EVER in my little suburb of Dallas, we could hear the sounds of firecrackers on one of the Indian holidays a few weeks ago. (At least, that’s what the PD said when we called them.)

 

[briggart]

Why would it be?

Similarly, Americans don't observe the UK's Guy Fawkes Night, Sweden's Walpurgis Night, or German Unity Day. Or 300 other important cultural holidays across the world. American Thanksgiving is just a local custom observed by about 5% of people.

American culture and customs dominate media and economy, so they tend to spill out into other countries, so I think there's a point in wondering if Thanksgiving has spread outside USA and Canada.

In Italy, Halloween was not a thing 20-30 years ago, but now it's getting more and more adopted. You don't see kids going around the neighborhood trick-or-treating, but they dress up when going to school, they carve pumpkins, etc.

Black Friday became a thing in the last decade, and that shifted the Christmas shopping season.

St. Patrick day was in vogue in the '80-'90s with the boom of Irish Pubs, faded a bit and now it's getting traction again, but coming from US college culture this time.

I don't think Thanksgiving will be a thing here, but I thought Halloween wouldn't either (we already celebrate Carnival) , so who knows in 10 years.

 

[GreyLord]

Why would it be?

Similarly, Americans don't observe the UK's Guy Fawkes Night, Sweden's Walpurgis Night, or German Unity Day. Or 300 other important cultural holidays across the world. American Thanksgiving is just a local custom observed by about 5% of people.

In the same note that I talked about how easy it was to observe Thanksgiving...I observe some of those as well!

Especially via Youtube or other facets of our modern day life!

Occasionally via the news (when it reports on events dealing with them).

 

[trappedslider]

 

[Kaodi]

Gotta say that American culture is getting more globalized over time. While it’s true we’re not seeing ALL of the world’s holidays celebrated here, more of them are. Especially the religious ones.

For example, for the first time EVER in my little suburb of Dallas, we could hear the sounds of firecrackers on one of the Indian holidays a few weeks ago. (At least, that’s what the PD said when we called them.)

In my corner of Canada we actually saw people lighting fireworks in a local parking lot on Diwali I think from our window. They high-tailed it out of there when they heard sirens (that turned out to be an ambulance I think) but came back around to light some more. Not sure if we were close enough to need to worry about "accidents" .

 

[BookTenTiger]

I like Thanksgiving better than Christmas, actually!

When I was a kid, our Thanksgiving dinners were bland and stressful. My dad was still drinking back then and my mom's side of the family is always going through a lot and is not good at communicating affection.

When I got older I decided to start reclaiming the holiday, in a number of ways.

First off, as an elementary school teacher I make sure to tell my students the true story of the first Thanksgiving, as taught to me by Wompanoag educators. (I won't get into it here but if you want to know more just message me!)

Then I focus on Thanksgiving as a celebration of family and gratitude. I enjoy cooking and being of service to the people I love, and Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to practice those things.

I'm the primary cook in my family for Thanksgiving. I have my turkey brine recipe I love. I'm a big pie baker and each year I make different pies. I like to try out different sides, never just making the same thing every year.

That said, the last few Thanksgivings have been challenging!

This year my wife has been deployed through CDC to Indian Health Services in rural North Dakota. We are in Week 10 and we have 8 more weeks to go. My family is flying in, which will be nice, but being a solo dad for a 4 year old is a lot of work while preparing for Thanksgiving!

Last year my wife was deployed to screen for Marburg virus at JFK airport in New York during Thanksgiving.

The year before that I got the flu from my students.

The year before that my wife got pink eye during the meal!

We really haven't had a normal Thanksgiving in years.

Here's the food I'm making this year. I'm farming out a salad, deviled eggs, and stuffing to my family.

Turkey (brined and roasted)
Mashed Potatoes
Roasted sweet potato, butternut squash, and carrots
Cranberry Sauce (canned, my family's preference)
Hawaiian Rolls (my family's preference)
Chess pie (one chocolate, one lemon)


I like Thanksgiving way more than Christmas because it's not as consumerist. I have a lot of unhappy Christmas memories growing up. But one of my favorites was driving on Christmas Day from San Francisco to LA with my dad. Normally it's a 6 - 8 hour drive depending on traffic, but there was no one on the road and we just flew down the highway. We had dinner in a packed Jewish deli (my dad's side of the family is Jewish and I consider myself an atheist Jew).

Most years we fly from Atlanta to California to celebrate Christmas with our families. The one big tradition I enjoy is having crab on Christmas Eve. My brother and I have a kind of unofficial crab eating contest, piling the shells as high as they can go.