Thanksgiving!
I know, I know, I'm about four days late in saying it, but Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Ever since I moved to the UK, I've forced my housemates and flatmates to celebrate this all-American holiday with me every fourth Thursday of November. It wasn't until I came to England two years ago that I realized nobody outside of America really knows what Thanksgiving is all about, so I thought I'd go ahead and share!
Originally - and I'm talking back in 1621 - Thanksgiving was a three-day feast celebrating both the successful harvest of some of America's earliest English settlers and their friendship with the local Native Americans, without the help of whom the settlers would certainly not have survived their first winter. The holiday was traitionally celebrated by Americans and was officially declared a holiday by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. Essentially, Thanksgiving has become a day to simply give thanks for what we've been blessed with, and I know for many students, it presents a welcome break from uni and college during which they can hurry home and have a brief mini-holiday with their families before the craziness of finals and coursework begins in early December. My English friends, and many Americans as well, tend to comment on the irony of Thanksgiving by noting the quick deterioration of the relationship following those first few years between the settlers and the Native Americans. Celebrity Angelina Jolie even takes this so seriously she openly boycotts the holiday entirely.
I can't count the number of times that my friends have cited shows like Family Guy or the Simpsons as representations of American culture. That said, I'm not surprised that Thanksgiving seems to many outsiders to be reduced to a handful of things:
Turkey...
the Macy's Day Parade...
Black Friday...
To be fair, all three of these do play a big part in many American's Thanksgiving festivities (and if you have no idea what they are, you can hit up each one's genius Wikipedia page). But really, for most of us, Thanksgiving is a time for family, great food, and being thankful for everything we have. And well...it usually includes pie, and who can dislike a holiday with pie?
Originally - and I'm talking back in 1621 - Thanksgiving was a three-day feast celebrating both the successful harvest of some of America's earliest English settlers and their friendship with the local Native Americans, without the help of whom the settlers would certainly not have survived their first winter. The holiday was traitionally celebrated by Americans and was officially declared a holiday by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. Essentially, Thanksgiving has become a day to simply give thanks for what we've been blessed with, and I know for many students, it presents a welcome break from uni and college during which they can hurry home and have a brief mini-holiday with their families before the craziness of finals and coursework begins in early December. My English friends, and many Americans as well, tend to comment on the irony of Thanksgiving by noting the quick deterioration of the relationship following those first few years between the settlers and the Native Americans. Celebrity Angelina Jolie even takes this so seriously she openly boycotts the holiday entirely.
I can't count the number of times that my friends have cited shows like Family Guy or the Simpsons as representations of American culture. That said, I'm not surprised that Thanksgiving seems to many outsiders to be reduced to a handful of things:
Turkey...
the Macy's Day Parade...
Black Friday...
& etc...
To be fair, all three of these do play a big part in many American's Thanksgiving festivities (and if you have no idea what they are, you can hit up each one's genius Wikipedia page). But really, for most of us, Thanksgiving is a time for family, great food, and being thankful for everything we have. And well...it usually includes pie, and who can dislike a holiday with pie?
Till next time!
Kathy
American Student Ambassador
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