Friday 26 November 2010

6 Days of Thanks


6: Thanksgiving
Today is our five month wedding anniversary and Thanksgiving (and my Aunt’s birthday and my the first day of my friend Hilary’s baby girl).  It’s just a wonderful day all around. 
There are a lot of things I don’t like about America.  But there are a lot of things I love and Thanksgiving is on the top of the list.  For all its faults, we have a national holiday set aside solely to say ‘Thanks.’  It causes stress, traffic jams, and kicks off one of the worst things about America (Black Friday), (in my opinion of course), but those hours with family saying what we are thankful for before enjoying a huge meal together not in front of the TV, but sitting together on tables pushed together in rooms too small.  We talk about our lives and our hopes and our plans. 
What a wonderful day.  It’s one of my favourites.  Here in the UK, I have to make Thanksgiving myself.  There is no build up, there are no paper turkeys, or harvest corn, no day off.  But this evening I hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner for my wonderful husband and our dearest friends here in the UK. 
Without the Macy’s Parade in the background it was hard to get into the mood.  So I found all the Thanksgiving episodes of ‘This American Life’ radio show and listened to those all day while I baked and prepped and cleaned.  If I hadn’t needed all the horizontal surfaces in our small kitchen I would have watched all the ‘Friends’ Thanksgiving episodes. 
It turned out great.  We had some cocktails and nibbles, a lovely dinner (with minimal left-overs packaged up for our guests), and three desserts. 
To make it even better, after dinner we skyped with my family just before their Thanksgiving feast. 
Today I give Thanks.

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