Notes on Thanksgiving

That is, notes about Thanksgiving that I wrote on the day of Thanksgiving.

The point of Thanksgiving, I've decided, is that it's one holiday the whole country can get behind.(Except the Native Americans, maybe. I'm not sure how they feel about it.) Instead of trying to smush a bunch of different religious celebrations into one time of year, everyone can just eat turkey and be thankful and watch the Macy's parade on TV and lapse into a tryptophan coma at the same time. It's pretty much like SuperBowl Sunday except you don't have to watch the game. And less finger food; you'll probably need to use a fork, at least to eat your mashed potatoes.

The other point is to provide a second holiday in the winter season, so that you can spend one with your own family and one with your in-laws. In a country this big, where people often end up far from where their families live, this is a very important consideration. You can't just do Christmas Day at your house and Stephen's Day (that's the day after) at his folks', and vice versa next year, the way we do in Ireland.

Further, another point of the whole thing is so that everyone can bond on Twitter and Facebook about how much they're panicking about it, how fabulous they menu they've planned is, how they're simplifying their lives and ordering out this year, how gross Martha Stewart's Twitter photos of food are, and how they've now eaten way too much and cannot possibly move off the sofa for another week.

And don't forget the way it provides a handy entrance point to Christmas. You can complain about Christmas creep all you like before Thanksgiving, but once that's done it's jingle all the way, baby, and no two ways about it. Many people put up their Christmas decorations as part of their Thanksgiving ritual, just to hammer this fact home.

Mostly, the point of Thanksgiving is to give the poor overworked American populace a chance to take a day off, or even three, without depleting their teeny tiny vacation allowance. They will probably spend most of this time stuck in traffic, but dammit, they will have their turkey.

And pie. Pie is very important at Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading, wherever you are.