To be annoyed by Thanksgiving in the UK?

[talomon]

Is it me or Thanksgiving is becoming quite widespread in the UK?

I studied in the states and live in central London, so maybe I am exposed to American people more than most, but I still feel many of my Brit and French friends and acquittances have started hosting Thanksgiving and treating it like a major holiday. Ten years ago it was quite obscure.

I mean I get that it's a nice occasion, and the food spread looks nice especially for social media, but still I am not sure I like it.

YANBU = Our culture is becoming to Americanized
YABU = It's a great holiday to celebrate

You can’t “throw stones” when you are covering the subject.

If if this was a topic about Catholicism (and how much it has contributed to the backwardness of my own island of Ireland over the centuries) then yes, we’d cover that one, but it isn’t. What you have done is whataboutery.

NZ is a British colony. There’s a Union Jack in the corner as a constant reminder. Where there Irish people, under Britain, involved in colonisation? Sure. But it’s a British controlled endeavour. As I said previously though had Ireland been powerful enough it too would have partaken in colonisation under its own jurisdiction.

I don't think I've ever known anyone to host a Thanksgiving celebration, who wasn't American or Canadian, or at least had strong links to America.

Maybe it depends what circles you move in?

Re throwing stones, I think I've made my point.

Re the Irish: my Irish ancestors took up rifles, joined the militias and ran the locals off their land. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Literally pmsl @ “I’ve made my point”

You sure have champ!

Had a chuckle at the second sentence too! So your Irish ancestors were wronguns. Apparently the colonisation of NZ was the least bloody and there was greater harmony with the natives (comparatively speaking). NZ also granted universal suffrage before any other nation. Kiwis are great people.

I've not heard of anyone celebrating it here. In fact it was about 9pm before I realised/remembered it was Thanksgiving in the USA.

There's certainly arguments to be made for and against continuing to celebrate it

So you are thinking of banning Thanksgiving in the USA? Good luck with that. Laughable

As if I'd single-handedly have the power to do it! it's a discussion, not an edict.

I don’t know anyone who celebrates it???

We have however celebrated Burns Night a couple of times (we’re not Scottish), just because it’s fun and good to have a reason to get together. I don’t see anything wrong with it (hope I’m not offending any Scottish people.

YANBU because I agree with your general point about Americanisation. However, I've never heard of anybody in Britain celebrating Thanksgiving.

Apparently the colonisation of NZ was the least bloody and there was greater harmony with the natives

Killing off more than half the indigenous population is 'least bloody' well that's a low bar you've set yourself

I agree with you about the Puritans but if they'd all died it wouldn't have made a difference. Lots of different English settlers were there as well as the French, Spanish and Dutch.

Thanksgiving really does not celebrate the pilgrims anymore, at least where I'm from. There are far worse examples of celebrating atrocities in the US.

NZ is a British colony. There’s a Union Jack in the corner as a constant reminder.

Don't be daft. NZ is not at all a 'colony' but an independent nation. It could change its flag or have a referendum about having Charles as HoS tomorrow if it wished.

Sigh

Canadians ‘do’ Boxing Day too!

I've an American friend and he doesn't do Thanksgiving. I'm not sure why, I should ask. I've never encountered British people celebrating it.

Always happy to share our poet.
The more the merrier.

By the same token, Guy Fawkes night might be seen as a deeply problematic celebration of immolating Catholics.

Christmas and Easter are problematic because the Church half-inched them from the pagan celebrations of Yule and Ostara, all the while having persecuted their originators, claimed they are evil devil-worshippers, and executed them for witchcraft.

When you come to think of it a lot of celebrations have dubious origins.

And how insular your circles are.

Sounds moreish!

It is when you don't examine some of the murkier origins of your own country's cultural celebrations and single out the US for criticism. So we might not overtly celebrate colonialism by marking it with a day off work. We celebrate/culturally appropriate plenty else arising out of oppression and genocide, albeit the origins tend to go further back in history.

Still doesn't put us on a superior moral footing, however. The UK is in no position to critizise the US on that score.

Every day’s a school day.

Not sure why you needed a sarky ‘sigh’ though. It’s okay for people not to know things you know? Not everyone is you.🙄

Behave. Why are you belittling people for not having every nation represented in their social circle?

Christ this thread is just a snide-fest

Who cares! I love celebrations and if there is an excuse to celebrate then why not?

They're basically celebrating stealing a nation from its indigenous people

@RambamThankyouMam
My grandparents went to primary school in the early years of the 20th century and were taught a little rhyme that they were obliged to recite daily in school. It went like this:

I thank the goodness and the grace

That on my birth have smiled,

And made me in these Christian days,

A happy English child

.........
A boiled sweet prize is yours if you can guess what country my grandparents lived in.

It took wars of independence to dislodge the British from the pink parts of the globe within the last hundred years - that is to say, living memory.

A little shocked by the amount of sugar in the recipes tbh!!

@RLScott

And what do you mean your family had to move south? My family didn’t. And where south?

Having your home and professional office torched and seeing the local constabulary do nothing to bring the perpetrators to justice will have the effect of focusing your mind on the question of how welcome you are in any given community, how safe your children are to play outdoors, go to school, explore the city you live in, etc.

South to a neighbouring state, of course.

You post here as if the UK is a paragon of civic virtue and religious tolerance, a state that never built the foundations of its economy on the labour of enslaved people in other places. It's not all that.

Even after slavery was ended in the British colonies, the British spinning industry continued to import American cotton, right up to the Civil War, and resuming afterwards. When the Civil War came, the supply of raw cotton from America dwindled, but the city of Liverpool in particular profited from the export of ships and armaments to the Confederacy.

Britain defended its global monopoly on finished cotton by legislating against the importation of Indian cotton and forcing India to open its markets to British produced cotton.

I am interested to know whether you subscribe to the idea that the Civil War was about states' rights or slavery? If the former, be careful of the company you keep.

The legacy of slavery is still embedded, warp and woof, in British society. It generated the capital that was invested in industry, in education, in infrastructure, in the financial sector.

"A boiled sweet prize is yours if you can guess what country my grandparents lived in."

Ireland.