Thanksgiving in not any other day, it’s the great American holiday.
It is the one major American holiday that is exclusively celebrated in the States . . .
Ok, not exactly. I’m mistaken on that one as Canadians just happen to celebrate it as well, just on a date closer to summer. If they celebrated it at the end of November, they might lose an extremity due to the cold. Needless to say, we started it first and they just happened to copy us.
Back to my point, it’s a holiday that hasn’t been completely transformed by retail businesses . . .
Well, not completely I guess. Black Friday has crept into the Thursday afternoon itinerary. Now eager shoppers ignore the current holiday in order to queue in the cold weather, seated on the cold concrete so they experience the fulfillment of saving $75 on a plasma screen t.v. when the alternative is much, much worse. For now, I’ll just pay that additional wealth for family time, food, and football.
Basically for me, Thanksgiving is still a great American holiday that revolves around the premise of giving thanks and spending time with family, vital elements of life.
This doesn’t mark the first time I have been outside the United States for Thanksgiving. When I volunteered in Perú, that signaled my first time abroad for this holiday. During our around the world trip in 2006, we spent Thanksgiving in Southeast Asia.
Yet this time was different, much, much different. Melancholy set in the evening before Thanksgiving with the realization that it would be the first time we ever had to work on Turkey Day.
Lounging Around on Thanksgiving
The entire day, my mind regressed to memories of morning football and the smell of pecan pies in the brisk West Texas air. All I yearned for was sitting on the couch, watching NFL football, hanging out with family, eating turkey, and then falling asleep for a nap. Due to the fact that I was teaching at CIS, I couldn’t do these things. I have to admit that it would not be my best teaching day.
Fortunately, a colleague had the great idea of bringing some normalcy to our ExPat American lives and put together a Thanksgiving dinner . . . in our basketball gym.
After school, several of us met up on the soccer field and played an intense game of flag football. One slight difference from back home, it was warm while we wore shorts and t-shirts. We followed our flag football game with a turkey potluck dinner and a Dallas Cowboys football game projected on a massive white screen.
I guess it was a bit like home as we spent time as a school “family” and ate the sleep-inducing turkey, one big difference, the Cowboys actually won.
