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

This. I’m American so I do celebrate but I wouldn’t care if people started celebrating other peoples traditions/holidays especially if they are about joy and togetherness. I wouldn’t have a second thought about it.

We had Thanksgiving dinner today for the first time (SIL is American, living in the UK). It was nice to put on a meal for her.

Turkey, stuffing, gravy, corn casserole, pineapple casserole, carrot soufflé, sweet potato casserole, macaroni cheese, green bean casserole, rolls, & mashed potato. Pecan pie and pumpkin pie for pudding.

I don't know anyone who celebrates it either

Ditto

Fine in businesses in places where there are a lot of ex-pat Americans, so fine in London. Fine if you are American, used to live in America, or have at least one American friend coming (or Canadian or from anywhere else that has thanksgiving).

Not really relevant for anyone else, but if you're having a houseparty or meal as a pre-Christmas event celebrating friends and harvest and good food and good cheer, go for it, won't affect me. Maybe some people who aren't religious sort of miss having a harvest-type festival and are doing this instead, maybe subconsciously?

However, instagramming everything you do and eat is very narcissistic and boring, can't bear it.

@LadyMarmaladeAtkins

Surely if Americans don't mind others celebrating Thanksgiving it shouldn't bother you?

Friend of mine makes pumpkin pie this time of year. She's not American but lived there for a few years as a child.

I've never known any Brits who didn't have connections to the USA to celebrate. I don't think it's at all offensive; I just don't see why they would.

And as for the Brits celebrating colonialism and genocide, oh my, ask all the ex-colonials about the Queen's funeral. Not to mention... until 1776 all those colonists were British!

knitnerd90

This thread is about Thanksgiving, but why miss an opportunity to have a distasteful dig at Brits?

I am British, so if that's the case, I'm digging at myself. I find it distasteful and historically ignorant when Brits try to downplay our own bad history.

🙄

I never knew anyone in the UK to celebrate it who wasn’t American but I was REALLY pissed off when my DC’s school - who have ONE American family - decided to do a school-wide celebration. Annoyed because my DC are mixed race, as are another family of the same heritage and we were told no when we requested a holiday for their heritage be marked. The reason being there too few children of X heritage. Why didn’t they just say “because it’s not a holiday for the white people”

I lived in the US for a good many years and my favourite holiday was Thanksgiving. I know of not one single person in the UK who celebrates it.

I have family coming over tomorrow and I've just realised I am making sweet potato mash and have apple pie for pud, I might pretend the chicken is a turkey too, lol

The actual concept of giving thanks is indeed lovely. That’s what most people (in the US I’m referring to here) see it as. From an actual historical perspective though, and at the risk of being a killjoy (which is fitting as that label relates to the group of people in question), it’s far from “lovely”.

Some sources for context:

The Puritan policeman:

www.jstor.org/stable/2085847

When Christmas carols were banned:

www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned

The most extremist, persecuting Protestant cult (Pilgrims, made up of Puritans, who left England as England wasn’t intolerant enough, see the first source), get fed by a group of Natives (who would see their land taken from them by the very colonists they fed). It’s no coincidence that it was colonists (namely thomas jefferson, the fella who owned 600 black slaves (“inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind” he wrote), and who dehumanised Natives as “merciless Indian Savages” in the Declaration of Independence) who made commemorating this a holiday. It’s coloniser day, that’s what it is.

Imagine in late 1939 if some Polish people fed some starving Germans who had recently invaded Poland, and then a certain German leader said let’s commemorate this event...ie.giving thanks to the persecuted Poles for feeding the invaders... you would laugh at the absurdity of it all (and downright cheek of the Germans).

Besides all this, as a catholic, I ain’t giving thanks that a cult (who would have had me hanging from a tree) got fed. This sect also murdered Quakers (Boston Martyrs...Mary Dyer the most famous) and only stopped after Charles I banned them from doing so. They also banned Christmas, see the second source (deeming it a “popish invention” and “rags of the beast”) which also makes it silly to commemorate what happened to a group of people one month and then the following month mark an event the same group of people banned. They also banned football on Sunday’s, banned toasting each other’s health, banned theatre (tore down Shakespeares Globe), banned couples dancing ...so any acting (movies), sports or basically enjoying yourself ...none of these should be happening on the day of commemorating what happed to a cult (but they obviously do...I mean they have NFL games on for Pete’s sake...the bleeding irony of it all).

Giving thanks (on its own) is indeed a lovely concept, but to clean up the event it should change its historical aspect by giving thanks that this tyrannical cult didn’t inflict more damage than they did.

Turkey is Christmas, dating from the mid 1500s.

The event that involved the tyrannical cult is more than 70 years later.

And the Catholic source:

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/america-history-of-hating-catholics

When Pilgrims and Puritans settled in New England half a century later they brought fresh venom from Europe’s religious conflicts, including the idea that the Pope was the “anti-Christ” and the “whore of Babylon”.

Oh and Jews and Quakers also suffered discrimination but were seen as a lesser threat....still murdered though, Boston Martyrs hung from the Boston gallows.

Had this cult not been fed, their intense hatred and persecution of those not in their cult, might have died with them. The Natives may well have had a peaceful life too as opposed to what they ultimately endured.

I’m Irish, and I have no qualms about exposing our own (and anyone else’s) bad history.

No-one who knows the historical origin of this particular “thanksgiving” (commemorating an intolerant, hate riddled cult getting fed by a people who would ultimately be displaced) should be celebrating it based on its background. Based on purely giving thanks (which is generally the case) is obviously fine and a lovely concept, which is also the case with my sister in law from the US.

@RLScott

Are you happy that people with similar views on Catholics spent 70 years enforcing a virtual apartheid in a province of the so-called United Kingdom, while Westminster turned a blind eye?

Asking as a Catholic whose family had to leave that province and move significantly south...

The Conservative and Unionist Party may sound pretty innocuous, and the Democratic Unionist Party may sound like a bunch of harmless democratic Unionists, but scratch the surface of the political history of your own back yard and you'll find the origins of the Civil Rights movement in NI.

Should British Catholics feel badly about the history of religiously justified persecution in both Britain and Ireland and refuse to have anything to do with the pomp of state - should they boycott the funeral of the late queen and the upcoming coronation of Charles III?

Also, Thomas Jefferson refused to endorse Thanksgiving on grounds that the separation of Church and State was an important principle.

It was Abraham Lincoln who gave the holiday some real momentum in 1863, hoping to establish a unifying, secular event in the throes of the Civil War, and it was finally codified by FDR in 1941. From Lincoln's time, Thanksgiving has been a secular national holiday, separate from feasts observed by organised religion.

I entirely agree about tossing the whole Pilgrims shtick. We live in the USA now and do celebrate but not based on that. however, I was replying to the smug person upthread who chose to greet Americans with "Happy Colonisers' Day," which is hypocritical. There's certainly arguments to be made for and against continuing to celebrate it, and whether and how a holiday can change (a friend of mine has a fascinating parallel argument about Christmas) but there's a lot of bloody hands on this topic.

That’s lovely that you put on a family meal for her. Not going to lie, I’d struggle with the menu (first 3 items, load my plate please - the rest, not so much). I love reading what people serve though.

With regards to the OP’s question, I only know one person who celebrates - an ex-colleague who is American living over here. I’ve not seen it taking over at all.

Oh it was the other slave owning tyrant (G. Washington), the one who signed the Fugitive slave act of 1793 into law which gave effect to the Fugitive Slave clause in the constitution (both these tyrants would place adverts in newspapers to get their slaves back), who declared the first thanksgiving proclamation.

Getting my tyrants mixed up.

And Abraham Lincoln...”I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” He also said, “I as much as any man am in favor having the superior position assigned to the white race”

Source:

www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-quotes-statesmen-race-idUSKBN2471YA

On Mount Rushmore (sacred Native land, like the entire place actually), made up of four sculptures (fitting carved by a Ku Klux Klan member), two slave owners, Lincoln (see above quotes), and T.Roosevelt (“only good Indians are dead”).

NI has been (and is largely still) a religious apartheid. And scratch what surface? Well yeah obviously we had the civil rights movement in the 1960s which both my parents took part in, who were inspired by the suffering and bravery of black people (yes, people, not property) in the US (hence “negroes of Northern Ireland” label). And what do you mean your family had to move south? My family didn’t. And where south?

It is commemorating colonisers though. You can be any nationality and say that (i do take your point about being smug though).

As Irish people we didn’t colonise anyone, and in all likelihood the only reason we didn’t as we weren’t in a powerful position to do so.

The basic gist of thanksgiving is lovely (as are Americans who mark it), but as you allude to the actual historical aspect to it is barbaric.

What on earth you on about? Since when has the UK ever celebrated Thanksgiving? You've definitely got your wires crossed.

Jeepers. There was enormous amounts of persecution of Catholics by Protestants and vice versa, particularly from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. I think anyone who has any familiarity with this subject knows this very well, and should know better than to throw stones (looking at you RLScott.)

???

What do you mean throw stones? The topic is about thanksgiving, which commemorates a hate riddled, persecuting cult getting fed. Those not in their cult who got persecuted (in my case, catholics) is the subject. Jews, Quakers, Anglicans etc. were also persecuted.

Whataboutery is a form of deflection. When a topic is brought up generally something relating to that subject gets covered, for example when the Pope visited the US:

America's dark and not-very-distant history of hating Catholics

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/america-history-of-hating-catholics

The Guardian didn’t “throw stones”, they covered the subject matter.

What do you mean throw stones? The topic is about thanksgiving, which commemorates a hate riddled, persecuting cult getting fed. Those not in their cult who got persecuted (in my case, catholics) is the subject. Jews, Quakers, Anglicans etc. were also persecuted.

I meant precisely that.

Btw I'm in NZ and Irish people were absolutely involved in colonization here in the nineteenth century, ie, fighting the locals and taking their land. Australia even more so. So there.