Things I didn't know, but probably should have...

[hells_half_acre]

Did you know that Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on a Thursday?! I didn't.

I can't believe that I've watched American movies and television, read American books and stories, and lived just north of America for my whole life and I never realized that Thanksgiving is on a Thursday for them.

What a strange day for a holiday.

I will file this under: Things Unexpectedly Learned from Watching Supernatural (in this case, specifically learned by time-lining it.)

I never understood why Americans bothered to travel home for Thankgiving - I mean, American Thanksgiving is so close to Christmas, it doesn't make much sense financially. But, I suppose if you are getting a 4/5 day weekend, you might as well go somewhere. Plus, Thanksgiving seems to be a much bigger deal in the US than it is in Canada.

Or maybe it was just never a big deal for my family. My Mum declared that we could only afford turkey once a year, so we choose Christmas. Sam and Dean had their Thanksgiving bucket of chicken, and we had our Thanksgiving chicken stir-fry.

So yeah, cultural differences I suppose...Canadian Thanksgiving is on a Monday, so you end your long weekend with a celebratory huge feast, instead of beginning it with one. Thursday indeed! SO STRANGE!

Comments

[dairygirl.livejournal.com]

I guess I never thought it was weird to have Thanksgiving on a Thursday because that is the way it always was. Think of it as more time to recover from the turkey overdose, yeah?

And spending time with family is good, but I am only 1.5 hours from mine so easier to travel than for many.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for you it'd be the opposite...if you woke up tomorrow and someone said "We're going to have Thanksgiving on a Monday now" you'd probably be like "What?!!?" and I'd be there thinking "what's the big deal?"

I just find it hard to imagine taking the time/money to travel home for the a long weekend at the end of November, and then turning around and doing it again two-three weeks later for Christmas...but yeah, if you are only 1.5 hours away, it's no big deal.

But yeah, mostly I'm just surprised that I never realized that Americans didn't have their Thanksgiving on a monday like we do... I mean, the early-October/late-November different is pretty easy to spot, but I never noticed the day difference before.