Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Last Word...

... on Thanksgiving, since it's over in about half an hour.  "Thanksgiving: a displaced Brit writes..."  The first bits:
When I first heard about this “Thanksgiving” thing, I thought it sounded like a great idea.

We Brits spend a ridiculous amount of time each day giving thanks to strangers – we say thanks to people who hold doors for us, thanks to people who stop their cars to let us cross the road, thanks to waitresses when they give us our bill; even thanks again when we hand over the money to pay. But apparently you Americans – innovative people that you are – had found a way to streamline the process.
Rather than waste hours each day expressing gratitude, you had decided to compress all of your thank-yous into one annual 24-hour-period of uninterrupted Thanks Giving. Get all that politeness out of the way in one go. An inspired solution, I thought, and one we should copy back home. Hell, we should have a ’sorry’ day too – we’d reclaim weeks of time.
But apparently I’d got the wrong end of the stick. Having consulted Wikipedia, it turns out that today is not about mundane expression of gratitude, but rather about big-ticket Thank-yous. For friends, family, a baby’s laugh, spreadable cheese. Stuff that really makes it a joy to be alive, and living in the home of the brave.
In just under an hour, I’m heading out to my first ever Thanksgiving dinner; I gather there will be turkey involved, and sweet potatoes – whatever they might be. And, despite my British cynicism, I’m very excited. But before I go, given that today’s celebrations began with some Brits moving to the USA and giving thanks for its awesomeness, I thought it might be appropriate to share five things – technological and otherwise – that make me… well.. thankful that a few months ago I too decided to make America my new home.
Here goes…
Now go read the rest... it ain't long and has a couple of things you may not have thought about today.
(h/t: Instapundit)

5 comments:

  1. That was hilarious! Except perhaps for calling American women crazier than a box of Glenn Becks.

    Crazier than one Beck I'll go for. But a box of them??? Seems a tad excessive.

    :-)

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  2. Heh. I *like* crazy, myself! ;-)

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  3. Hmmm. I thought his slight on British women was even nastier. And as for banks, I'm assuming he was kidding?! My sister left her US bank in tears the made it so hard for her to open an account! We never heard the end if it. No we don't use cheques here at all. I'm not a great fan of Brits who do this whole suck up thing even when it is tinged with a touch of the self depracating humour we do so well. So whoever he is, he goes straight into my bad books.

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  4. It seems to me that the Pilgrims were especially thankful to have made it through a tough year, but their freedom to worship as they wanted without all the political harassment from kings and other aristocrats was well worth it. It seems the Brits would be thankful for this bit of freedom making its way to them, also.

    I'm thankful for lots of good ideas that came from the Brits,and I would think that it would be vise-versa,too.

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  5. Geeze Louise. Imagine a Brit opening his/her yap about a Yank institution. (Especially one our fearless leader hasn't mucked with yet.)
    I will not mention haggis (yeah, I know, but I first ran into in England). Nor will I say anything about Boxing Day. (That's a particularly silly one to me.) And then there's vegemite...urrrck. Sorry all. Hope you didn't mind me saying sorry, but I was brought up to be courteous.
    Giggle, giggle, giggle.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.