Thursday, November 22, 2007

So long, and thanks for all the turkey

Today is Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday that, to the outsider, appears to celebrate the deliciousness of turkey. In reality, it celebrates gluttony, the four-day weekend, and pre-Christmas shopping. Or something like that.

In keeping with recent tradition, we hightailed it to central New Jersey to have a Thanksgiving meal with Sarah's family. This year, due to my new interest in football, I actually enjoyed watching the Thanksgiving Day football game on Fox, in which the Green Bay Packers beat the Detroit Lions. Brett Favre was not the first football player I'd heard of while growing up in Malaysia (a gentler land where "football" means soccer and American football is about as popular as getting punched in the face). But Brett Favre and the Packers won the Superbowl the year I came to the United States, so his name is, to me, synonymous with Americana. Favre is 38 years old now. He's still the starting quarterback for the Packers. It's actually sort of amazing.

Here's the other thing about Thanksgiving: it's the day before Black Friday, ostensibly the biggest shopping day of the year. Today, apart from the areas surrounding the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Manhattan was a ghost town, the calm before the storm. Tomorrow, I expect pandemonium.

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