Why The UK Should Celebrate Thanksgiving 11/20/2015 11:54:05 AM
Thanksgiving has always been a North American holiday but here are some reasons why the UK should celebrate it too. As an American who has been living in the United Kingdom for nearly three decades, the one American holiday I insist on celebrating every year is Thanksgiving. I just love to sit down with family and/or friends and consume copious amounts of turkey, sweet potatoes and other veg, finishing off with pumpkin pie for desert. My tradition has been picked up by my own children who look forward to it every year. Plus, when I was living on my own in Bristol, I cooked a Thanksgiving for sixteen people, all of whom, afterwards, great appreciated why I celebrated it.
But why should the UK celebrate Thanksgiving? One reason is that it has British roots. The Pilgrim Fathers who celebrated the first Thanksgiving, were from England. Some of those who were there were more than likely ancestors to some still living in Britain. Of course, if that's not enough, since the Pilgrims were the first religious dissenters to go to America (James I and subsequent 17th Century English Monarchs used America as a dumping ground for its religious non-conformists)Britain could always celebrate the fact that they kicked the Pilgrims out of England.
Of course, there is a more practical reason for why Britain should celebrate Thanksgiving. It's only the middle of November and many people in the UK are already fed up with all the Christmas adverts on the television. If they had Thanksgiving, no one would be thinking about Christmas until the end of November, thus they would be spared from three weeks of Christmas advertising.
