Julian Price

What is Thanksgiving - Family, Turkey Dinner, Christmas Dress Rehearsal?


Posted: Tuesday, November 03, 2009

by
http://www.uk-freelance-content-writer.co.uk/

For many of us here in the UK , Thanksgiving as celebrated in the United States ( Canada also celebrates Thanksgiving in October) can be a confusing affair. Many of us, unless we have American relatives and friends or have spent some time living in the States, only have access to the traditions of Thanksgiving via the medium of Hollywood movies or through the fast diminishing art that is known as reading informative books. With the history of the two countries being so intrinsically linked, it is a mystery why this particular portion of history is not (or at least it wasn't in my education) taught in British schools.

As with many Christmas movies, the films seem to be centred on family squabbles, dreamy romantic relationships or transport and travel mayhem with a large turkey dinner situated somewhere in the middle!

As a young person, watching these "Thanksgiving" movies, it was difficult to discern any notable difference between them and Christmas movies. After all, it seems like such a great time to have a Christmas Dress Rehearsal, just a month before Christmas itself, when the shopping has already started, many of the decorations are already on display and the kids' excitement is just about set to "GO"!

For those of us unaware that Thanksgiving is historically a giving of thanks for the year's harvest, I think we perhaps envy this American holiday, wishing we too, could have an extra day off work in November with all the added trimmings!

One may wonder why the British have not adopted this holiday,(although many British churches still hold harvest festivals and services, these don't usually spill over into secular consciousness) when it is said that the first ever Thanksgiving came about in the year 1622 when American natives helped the English pilgrims survive a brutal and harsh winter in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Perhaps we are not as grateful as we should be or as with most celebrations and holidays, the true meaning has been lost in the sands of time and materialism.

Speaking of materialism, we don't have "Black Friday" (apparently the unofficial Christmas shopping kick off, the day after Thanksgiving) in the UK either, although we do have plenty of " Bleak" Monday's, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays!

What does the Thanksgiving holiday mean to you, in your part of the world?
Julian has diplomas in freelance journalism (with distinction), copywriting and proofreading. He is also a creative writer and poet who writes both professionally and for pleasure. Julian has written articles for an internet marketing company and although this medium is often restricted by topic, his writing still maintains a unique and often humourous style, with many of his articles achieving good results on search engines. He has found the discipline involved with this kind of work to be a great writing exercise and believes it enhances and improves other areas of his writing. Julian is becoming an established freelance writer and many of his articles here at searchwarp are a showcase of the variety and quality of his work.

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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)
» left by Muse from Super-Massive Black Hole! 2 years 98 days ago.
The reason no-one here celebrates Thanksgiving is because it's an empty holiday, mainly cos a generation after the native americans helped ye ye went off and stole/killed nearly everything they had. So no I don't wanna celebrate something just cos theirs a nice freckin turkey.......
» left by Julian Price 2 years 98 days ago.
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Cheers for the comment.
» left by Ken McCreless
from Event Horizon 2 years 96 days ago.
Thanksgiving, to me, means spending time with family, aside from eating yourself into oblivion!
» left by Julian Price 2 years 94 days ago.
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Wishing you Happy Eating in a couple of weeks Ken! Thanks for the comment!
» left by Kacy Carr
 2 years 95 days ago.
Loved the article Julian and can't stop thinking about Kens comment above about eating himself into oblivion. Right now I would like to do this as my belly is eating my legs
 
Keep well
 
Kacy
» left by Julian Price 2 years 94 days ago.
59 fans. Follow Julian Price on twitter!
Glad you enjoyed the article Kacy! Appreciate you taking time to comment! Julian
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