Giving Thanks, down here

My first American Thanksgiving has been a really interesting lesson in American culture. Let me say, along with the differences in dates, American Thanksgiving is quite different from its Canadian counterpart.

First of all, Thanksgiving is big—much more important in the U.S. than Canada. It is a holiday tradition for families across the country to reunite via plane. Satire aside, it really is a common question to ask: "So are you flying anywhere this Thanksgiving?" As far I can tell, this isn't just gratuitous consumption, it comes from a real desire to reunite families no matter what. Crazy!

Anyway, Thanksgiving down here is really kind of nice: it's like Christmas without the commercial trappings, all about family, friendship, and giving thanks. We went to a Thanksgiving dinner and people really did give thanks at the table. And meant it, no less.

Another thing: being the U.S., there are strong nationalistic overtones to the holiday. Thanksgiving actually means something, since it forms the cornerstone of the national mythology. Thanksgiving is the symbolic meeting of the new and old worlds—pilgrim and aboriginal dining together. Okay, it glosses over genocide and all, but the symbolism is there. Sam came home with a colouring-book page with a picture of an iconic pilgrim on it. We don't have this layer of symbolism laid over Thanksgiving in Canada (and let's face it: Canada is just terrible at doing national mythologies, anyway. The Plains of Abraham? Oh, puh-leez. What kind of a symbolic founding of a nation is that? How can you turn that into a colouring book?).

So, I think it's time for a little cultural conspiracy theorizing, courtesy of Gab. Here's a question: in Canada, why don't we ever hear about how much cooler American Thanksgiving is? We hear about everything regarding American culture, but we don't hear about American Thanksgiving as a genuine non-commercial expression of family, giving thanks, and community.

The conspiracy: could it be that we don't get this through the media because it doesn't exactly fit with the Canadian national conception of Americans?

Hmmmm ...