Thanksgiving in Wales

We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here in the UK, in fact, until recently we hadn’t really heard of it, and I had to look it up in Wikipedia to see what exactly the Americans were celebrating. Apparently it’s

“A holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. “

That sounds fine to me, a little like our Harvest Festival which we don’t really do much about, and it doesn’t seem to have too many religious connotations either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to start celebrating it whole-heartedly. However, looking back through our weblog recently I noticed that over the past couple of years we have had a big roast dinner towards the end of November. This wasn’t anything to do with Thanksgiving, in fact, it was actually part of a cost-cutting exercise for Christmas.

A few years ago when we had a little more money we had a delicious multi bird roast for Christmas Dinner. It really was nice, but we haven’t been able to afford that for a few years now so instead we decided to try a £5 four-bed roast from Iceland one year. Before actually having it on Christmas Day though we thought it would be prudent to check it out first and therefore needed up having a big roast dinner at around Thanksgiving. I hadn’t realised it, but we did something very similar last year. So, I’ve decided that we should do it this year as well. Who knows, it might become a regular thing and no doubt with the rest of the world becoming more and more Americanised all the time everyone will be celebrating Thanksgiving before too long.

Some of the things associated with it such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are already infiltrating, so why not go the whole hog with a proper American style weekend of gluttony and rampant consumerism. We’ve got some food in ready for our special Thanksgiving weekend – we’re trying a British Stuffed Duck from Lidl, with all the usual veggies, even brussel sprouts. It won’t be as decadent as our Christmas dinner but it’ll be nice all the same. It’s quite a god time of year to do this as well, something to look forward to before the mad build up to Christmas.

What’s more I’ve decided to add to our Thanksgiving traditions this year and use the weekend to bake a Christmas Cake. I’ll soak the fruit in some brandy overnight tonight and then bake away tomorrow. I think this will become a tradition for us – Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas Cake baking on Thanksgiving weekend – why not!

Tags: ChristmasWales