Thanksgiving

[poliphilo]

According to the news sheet they display at the checkout in Waitrose one in every ten Brits is now celebrating Thanksgiving.

What!

Why?

It's not our history.

Why put yourself to all the trouble and expense of a second gourmandising winter festival when it isn't mandatory?

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People know so little history.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's a case of any excuse of a booze up.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

These things just push me deeper into the "bah humbug" camp.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I don't believe it for a moment!

Made up garbage and another way a supermarket has found to push additional crap at people in the run up to 'C' word!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, I did wonder...

I also wonder how on earth they arrive at these figures. How much research did they do?

(If any)

[(Anonymous)]

i am a Chinese student and i am learning English now. But i do not very understand the meaning very clearly, can you give me more explain about this?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanksgiving is an American festival- celebrating the harvest. According to an article I read yesterday the British are beginning to adopt it. I think one winter festival (meaning Christmas) is quite enough.

[matrixmann]

Americanization of the world.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes

[raakone.livejournal.com]

The last few times I visited the UK (I'm from Canada, by the way) I noticed other signs of Americanization. Halloween now means something in the UK (ironically, it WAS once celebrated there eons ago, but clamped down on for being "too Catholic"), "Mothering Sunday" is now just "Mother's Day", and there's American-style ads on TV for lawyers (if you've been injured, CALL NOW, we only get paid if YOU DO)

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Well, supposedly the Americans are celebrating coming to a new country. You could always celebrate that they left.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You have a point. The puritanism of the Pilgrim Fathers is something we were well rid of.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHA!

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

How bizarre! I live in America and I don't even celebrate Thanksgiving because Not My Culture. o_O

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I thought it was celebrated by Americans of all cultures.

Well, well, well....

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

Makes no sense to me... If you want a party, then just have one... You don't have to hijack a festival that isn't related to you!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, quite.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

If it's true, I wonder if it's because there are numbers of American expats living in the UK, and possibly because many Brits have family members and friends living over here that they've visited and who've visited them, so they just adopted the day?

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

I hadn't thought of that. Good point.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Because you can buy more stuff, eat lots more food than is good for you and get plastered!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Any excuse, I suppose...

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

It's more ironic than that: it's America celebrating breaking away from y'all. Why would Brits celebrate that?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People don't know their history. Most Brits won't have any idea about the origins of Thanksgiving.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Thanksgiving is one holiday here in the states that isn't overhyped much. People don't give Thanksgiving presents or hold big Thanksgiving parties, except insofar as family and/or friends gather for the canonical turkey. There are parades in the bigger cities, and of course there's football.

But people don't decorate their doors, windows, and front gardens for Thanksgiving the way they do for Christmas and, increasingly, Hallowe'en and Easter. Thank goodness!

I'm very fond of Thanksgiving. It's the pause before the plunge (or, for some folks, in the midst of the plunge).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So it's not overly commercialised; that's nice.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

Amongst English-speaking expats in Korea, Thanksgiving seems to be popular with everybody, and many British/Australian/etc people I know here anticipate it each year. It does serve as a nice end-of-year giving-thanks-among-friends festival, before a lot of people go travelling over Christmas.

Also the food is quite nice and really suits the time of year. (As an Australian living in the northern hemisphere, I still get excited about how much the traditional foods for each holiday actually suit the time of year!)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

I don't believe I've ever sat down to a Thanksgiving Dinner. I've done the 4th of July but I've never been in America or around Americans in November.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

You could keep the celebration and just change the name from Thanksgiving to Goodriddance.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

LOL

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

But that begs the question, if your don't celebrate Thanksgiving, then just how do you Brits celebrate genocide?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess the nearest we come is November 5th- when we celebrate the thwarting of the gunpowder plot and the subsequent torture and execution of the surviving plotters.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

My feeling exactly. (I hate Thanksgiving).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't like being made to celebrate anything.