Do you observe Thanksgiving?

[Corinnguard]

Halloween night most stores are tearing down and putting out the Xmas stuff. As John Oliver said Xmas is eating other holidays.

Not at my workplace. We were getting in so much Christmas stuff before Halloween that we had to start putting it out in my store's seasonal section. One aisle in seasonal had Halloween candy and paraphernalia, the other seasonal aisle had Christmas stuff. We started taking down Halloween on November 1st.

 

[MGibster]

Behold what I hath wrought!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

burp

 

[TiQuinn]

Behold what I hath wrought!

View attachment 423307

Doing my first spatchcocked turkey today! Hoping it looks like this! (Cutting that backbone out is a pita!)

 

[jian]

The comical thing about anti-colonial backlash aimed at Thanksgiving is that the annual holiday in the United States was actually created to give thanks for the Union winning the Battle of Gettysburg (something I for one am still thankful for) and generally to promote the idea that the future was hopeful as 1863 came to a close. And even that is just the political circumstances that allowed activist Sarah Joshepa Hale to finally succeed at her effort to have the disparate local thanksgiving harvest festivals in New England (celebrations which, despite geography, had nothing to do with Pilgrims) made into a national holiday (with her preferred menu!).

The "First Thanksgiving" with Pilgrims and Wampanoag was an actual event, but it almost certainly took place earlier in the season (during the harvest!) and only became conflated with the annual holiday later. I would presume the conflation happened in part to sell the celebration in the reintegrated Southern states and in part because of general mythmaking and desire to make a newish holiday look like an ancient tradition, but it seems it was mostly the standardization of grade school curricula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that really put the Pilgrims in the spotlight. Partly this was part of the assimilationist and national pride inculcating agenda of those curricula, but in defense of the school teachers I'll say that a simple story about sharing and survival from early in the country's history makes pedigogical sense for elementary students, whereas trying to explain to students why they should be thankful for Union war victories (long before they study the Civil War) does not.

It would be much better if US Thanksgiving was associated with the end of the Civil War than with the Pilgrims.

 

[Clint_L]

Our Christmas-eve dinner has always been the big one for our family, with a standing rib roast at the center Dessert has always included a grasshopper pie (the liqueurs not the insects). Christmas dinner itself could be whatever.

Christmas Eve is just whatever is fun - usually some sort of potluck. Christmas Day dinner is essentially the same as Thanksgiving.

 

[The Soloist]

No. It holds no special meaning with my family or in my home. Just another day on the calendar.

 

[jian]

Speaking for myself - no, I’m English and I don’t observe Thanksgiving. But we live in Vancouver now and so we’ve had turkey the last two Octobers. Canadian Thanksgiving is just a harvest festival, much like Korean Chuseok (which I also observe occasionally) and sensibly placed in October.

(I greatly appreciate the fact that Canada basically has about one statutory holiday per month, unlike the UK which bundles them at random times and so there are no holidays between August and December. Why doesn’t the UK have a harvest festival? As discussed previously, neither Halloween nor Bonfire Night count, and maybe we should stop celebrating a Catholic terrorist nearly blowing up Parliament.)

(It would also be helpful if the Bank Holidays we had actually celebrated something rather than just being "August Bank Holiday" or whatever. We have three of these anonymous holidays: May Bank Holiday (early May), Spring Bank Holiday (late May), and August Bank Holiday (late August). For instance, maybe we could call the late May one Restoration Day* (25/5/1660) and the August one Abolition of Slavery Day (28/8/1833)? Also, do a proper holiday for Remembrance Day (11th of November) as Canada does, since we seem to all care so much about poppies? It'd be nice to have a Bank Holiday in November.)

*Depends how much you like the monarchy - I don't and I think the Protectorate was a missed opportunity for early democracy but at least half of all Brits do seem to like having a king.

 

[Cadence]

It would be much better if US Thanksgiving was associated with the end of the Civil War than with the Pilgrims.

The late-middlish part even. Pulled up his proclamation earlier today in part due to this thread.

 

[Cadence]

Christmas Eve is just whatever is fun - usually some sort of potluck. Christmas Day dinner is essentially the same as Thanksgiving.

Christmas Eve for us was always when the whole side of the family could get together, so that's the one we did up. Christmas was just immediate family and might even have had leftovers from the night before still