Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

[coollikeme]

to everyone!!!

[MSC2471]

Thank you Coollikeme. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving with their family and friends.

Matt

[cdn2wheeler]

We did our Thanksgiving in Canada last month (makes sense, as our growing season ends earlier because of our northerly latitudes).

It's my favourite holiday. Food, family, fun, and no quasi-religious overtones.

Enjoy, my American friends! Pass the gravy...

[Tuumble]

Can someone tell an ignorant Brit where this thanksgiving idea stems from. Is it always the same day? Is it more important to you than Christmas? Why do you say: 'Happy Holidays' then when we say 'Happy Chrsitmas'?

I know I can look it up but I'd like to hear what Thanks-giving means to you.

[Angela]

Tuumble, Thanksgiving is the traditional annual tribute the predominant American value: Gluttony.

We give thanks for all the artery-clogging food, and then empty a canister of whipped cream on our brother's face while he sleeps off the effects of the tryptophan. We pay homage to all of the neuroses that exist with families, and we indulge in the yearning that comes with never having enough of anything. We drink too much and cringe with embarassment when Aunt Fanny does her annual flamenco dance on the table top. We drive home hoping not to get a DUI or worse. Then we pass out, grumbling about why does my sister have to be such an ******* every year?

Then we get up very early the next day for the biggest shopping day of the year, which is affectionately known as Black Friday. I'm not making that up.

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble, gobble!

[Lola]

Ah, our sweet friend Angela is a bit cynical - but not incorrect!

Thanksgiving in America - not always the same date, but the same day - the third Thursday of November. It stems from the earliest American settlers (aka White Europeans) surviving their first year here and reaping their first harvest, thanks to assistance from the Indians. At least that's what I learned in grade school. Now I know the Indians are Native Americans, the REAL first settlers here, and we later repaid their kindnesses by raping their women, pillaging their homes and stealing their land - but who's being cynical now?

These days it's mostly about a four-day weekend, and like cdn said, food (too much), fun (of the dysfunctional sort), family (neuroses and all), and football. The football kind of football. Not the soccer kind of football.

Protestants would no doubt argue Christmas is more important from a religious stand point. Those that buy into the crass materialism Christmas has come to represent would also vote for Xmas as top holiday dog. AFAIC they are both completely saturated in self-indulgent commercialism and have lost any semblence of original intent.

We don't say "Merry Christmas" anymore because it's been deemed horribly politically incorrect and insulting to those in our great ethnic *melting pot* who are not white anglo saxon protestants. "Happy Holidays" is often used instead as a generic, inoffensive greeting that still parlays *holiday spirit*.

Now. More pie.

[Tuumble]

Thanks for that Lola and Angela. Does this mean that you have to do all this again in a months time? Wow!

Originally Posted by Lola

Not the soccer kind of football.

I'm sorry I'm going to have to pick you up on this.The football you play over there is NOT football. Apart from anything else the ball is rarely anywhere near the feet apart from field goals.

Football is football period. Soccer simply does not exist - it's purely a name The US came up with to differentiate between the REAL game and the American version.

The oldest football club in the world - Sheffield Football Club - was 150 years old last month. The American game as we know it started after that.

Sorry, I'll shut up now!

[Tuumble]

Originally Posted by Lola

We don't say "Merry Christmas" anymore because it's been deemed horribly politically incorrect and insulting to those in our great ethnic *melting pot* who are not white anglo saxon protestants. "Happy Holidays" is often used instead as a generic, inoffensive greeting that still parlays *holiday spirit*.

Now. More pie.

Actually, reading that again makes me quite mad. Not at you Lola but the way we have to change the name of a religious festival so not to offend minorities.

You're not telling me that they do the same with theirs. So it's OK for us to change but not them?

I'm not relegious to any great degree but I do get a bit annoyed when it's one rule one and one for another.

Now. More pie.

[Lola]

Originally Posted by Tuumble

I'm sorry I'm going to have to pick you up on this.The football you play over there is NOT football. Apart from anything else the ball is rarely anywhere near the feet apart from field goals.

heh -

I knew I'd get a rise out of you with that!

[Lauxa]

Yeah, we do it all over again at Christmas, but then we get the added stress of commercialism.

And usually the Christians still say Merry Christmas, but the agnostics and Jews and atheists and others go with Happy Holidays and so do big corporations and government-sponsored organizations.