It’s the early hours of Thanksgiving morning in the States, and to celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d give the politics a break for a moment and talk about the odd little piece of Americana known as Thanksgiving. Americans say of Thanksgiving that, along with Independence Day, it is the one holiday the entire country celebrates, and on my one time experience, Turkey Day did seem a bigger deal than, say, Christmas. It makes sense that a religiously pluralistic country like the States, one with the separation of church and state sewn into its Constitution, would have its genuinely unifying celebrations be the ones inspired by history and patriotism. (Thanksgiving, of course, does have a religious element, but it is not as specific about it in the way Christmas or Hanukkah is.) It can be a little disorienting for Australians to experience Thanksgiving, since there is no real analogue to it in our culture, and although it has the familiar holiday touchstones - family and food - it was, for me, an entirely new experience.

My American Thanksgiving was in 2004. I was studying in Washington State at the time, and in an act of immense kindness, my American friend Jessica invited me to accompany her back home to Kent, in the southern suburbs of Seattle, for the holiday. I was curious to see what the day was like, since after all, there didn’t seem to be much more to the celebration than turkey-eating. Other Americans I spoke to, in the weeks leading up to it, had told me, with a surprising amount of feeling, that it was their favourite holiday. They said Thanksgiving… [read more]

This Thanksgiving, I was indulgent and talked about my one American Thanksgiving at the USSC blog. Football, turkey, what I saw as a foreigner, stuff like that. Check it out.