American Christmas

[RedHelenB]

Just curious to know whether the naff Christmas movies are at all like the experience over there. Do you bake Christmas cookies and deliver to neighbours? Do you have candy cane lanes?

You can get all the ingredients and in fact the supermarkets usually have a whole display of all the dried and candied fruits & nuts leading up to Christmas. You would have to mix the spices yourself, rather than buying mixed spice in a tin, but that's easy enough. The problem is that fruitcake is a national joke in the USA. Everyone professes to hate it, yet it's still gifted. I don't understand it. (The exception are West Indians who make and eat black cake.)

There's all sorts of cookies -- sugar cookies for rolling and decorating are popular but so are spritz cookies made in a press, and pretty much everyone has some sort of family recipe. Pfeffernusse, buckeyes, pizzelle (I think Italians alone have two dozen kinds), Mexican wedding cookies, springerle, peanut butter blossoms with a Hersheys kiss in the centre, jam thumbprints... I've seen everything. People have cookie swaps and make cookie tables.

In the Southern US, coconut cake is the traditional Christmas dessert.

For my US relatives Christmas is all about the presents and Thanksgiving is about the food

This is so interesting!

I’m curious- as Thanksgiving is such a big holiday - are there any other traditions associated with it other than the food? Any decorations, gifts, activities, movies, music, parties etc? Like there is with Christmas?

That's why Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday - no presents, no easter eggs, no nothing. Just make a lovely meal and get together with family and friends.

I know some posters are shocked at people going back to work on the 26th but it isn't as cut and dried as that. Schools are closed and university students are home and many businesses do actually close between christmas and new year. (and even in the UK and Ireland retail workers and healthcare etc are all back on the 26th right?) So some people do take time off - often to go skiing in this neck of the woods. My dh is off for a week as his firm is closed. DS is taking a week off to go hiking etc. DD will work on 26th as her work requires coverage every day and she doesn't mind.

If you are someone for whom the holidays are tricky or difficult for whatever reason, I think that not everyone celebrates and that the holiday doesn't stretch on for 10 days, makes it easier to weather the whole thing.

People usually decorate with autumnal stuff for Thanksgiving - pumpkins and turkeys and fall foliage stuff. I have white pumpkins with people's names written on them as name-settings. Everyone who has had a child who went through kindergarten has a turkey drawn by tracing their hand, coloured in and with something like "I am thankful for my family".

Football is a big thing at thanksgiving - lots of high schools have traditional friendly games with their rivals and people go to those. People may watch the Macy's thanksgiving parade on tv. It really is a holiday for cooking, getting together, playing a game, hanging out. it is one of my favourite holidays.

Sounds really lovely! Thanks for sharing - so interesting 🤩

For decorations, there's decorative gourds, autumn leaves, pots of mums and foil wrapped chocolate turkeys. Christmas cookies the standard I would say are sugar cookies, kind of like shortbread but able to be cut with cookie cutters. There are others like candy cane cookies, chocolate crinkles and so on.

We put pumpkins out for Halloween and keep them there through Thanksgiving, and I usually have an autumnal centerpiece for the table if we are hosting, but that's about it for decorations. Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday.

Yes, some non-retail businesses and non-profits close the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, but many are open. My workplace is, and I actually like working then because it's quieter, and I can get a lot done. I prefer to take time off later in the summer so I can go up north and escape the heat and humidity for several weeks.

@SenecaFallsRedux Did you make that cake? Stately! I would eat that for any holiday or just a Thursday

What has Boxing Day got to do with being Christian?

Sad to say, no I did not. But I have made some similar ones. It's DH's favorite cake so I make it for him for his birthday. His has lemon curd filling; for Christmas, I use raspberry or strawberry jam for the filling. There are lots of different versions on the web.

What has Boxing Day got to do with being Christian?

Well, it is St. Stephen's Day, although I imagine even quite a few Christians in the US don't know that or celebrate it in any way.

Only one day off???really??

Shocking.

Very interesting thrsad.

One day off sounds ridiculous when you think of pottery barn

St Stephen's day isn't a holy day of obligation in the catholic church in the US (not sure it even is in Ireland), still less a secular holiday. I've never heard it even mentioned in a church in the US. There are loads of saints' days - if every Christian celebrated every saint's day in the liturgical calendar with a day off, sure we'd get nothing done.

I'm thinking and thinking of Pottery Barn and trying to imagine its effect on days off :) But I do like Pottery Barn. And Crate and Barrel. And days off.

I’m Australian. We always had a stocking. I now live in the UK, and my (now adult) children have always had stockings. 🤷‍♀️

That looks lovely!

We are in Canada, and I would say our traditions are a mixture of UK and US.
Our thanksgiving is earlier (early Oct), so most families do turkey and ham for both, though you do get people doing roast beef etc also.

I would say in Canada Christmas is the bigger holiday not thanksgiving.

Where we live lots of homes decorate outside with lights and blow-ups etc. This starts after halloween. Cookie exchanges/baking is very popular. Gingerbread house making, nearly everyone gets a tree (real or fake), Santa is at every mall for a photo with the kids. Loads of people do elf on the shelf nowadays though that is newer.

British influences are we have crackers, stockings/sacks, boxing day. Plenty of people will do tradition desserts like a trifle or chocolate log. Christmas pudding, cake and mincepies are less popular but still available. We can get UK chocolates like Terry's choc orange and after eights. The stores have a lot of specialty Christmas items, party food etc.

In schools the younger children or kids in the choir or band will do a Christmas concert. The last week of school is usually a 'spirit week' with ugly Christmas sweater day etc. Then the schools are closed for two weeks.

I would say there is a lot of enthusiasm for Christmas here in Canada!!

I imagine many in the UK don't know it either - and the holiday is not for St. Stephens Day, it is for Boxing Day, nothing to do with religion.

Do all retail workers have two days off at Christmas in the UK? I very much doubt that many of them do - they certainly don't here.

Older people in the USA will remember Pilgrims and Indians themed things for Thanksgiving but they're not done anymore except maybe the occasional Pilgrim hat with a buckle (which is apparently historically inaccurate, I just looked it up!) Nowadays it's generic fall decor, and that's not even required, that's just the sort of thing people who are into decorating do. We did get the paper hand turkey craft, I think it is universally taught to teachers!

But basically Thanksgiving is just food and friends and family and football on TV. When we were new to the USA we got invites to people's houses. My husband has fallen in love with it because all you do is stuff yourself silly and then fall into the sofa. No worries about what to buy everyone and there's three kinds of pie. People do put their own spins on the menu (I read about an Indian immigrant who makes her turkey tandoori style, Black folks often have macaroni & cheese and they often do sweet potato pie instead of pumpkin) but the theme is more cohesive than Christmas.

Not a strange thing to say at all. What I found odd is the massive commercial build up and swoosh it's all done and dusted in one day ....and I think you'll find many places shut in the UK until the 4th/5th Jan. We don't go back till the 8th Jan

As someone in the US has already said some people take holidays at this time of year - just as you are doing.

What is done in the UK on December 26th which makes it such a continuation of the Christmas celebrations btw? You are just joining in with the general US bashing which many Brits seem to delight in - quite oblivious to the fact that many of us who don't live there often have wtf?? moments when we read about some strange way Brits have of doing things, but are too polite to mention on here.

Feast of St Stephen.

Yet if you ask what do Americans eat for Thanksgiving you get a standard answer? The OP was only interested, no need to be nasty.