The Thanksgiving Holiday has a very...unique quality to it. I'm avoiding the word 'strange' because I'm certain it's just strange to us - both as outsiders, but also because Thanksgiving is about families, and ours are 4000 miles away.
There is no huge build-up to Thanksgiving, like there is to Christmas. It just rolls up, and everyone returns to their families, often travelling huge distances to do so. There is always a full program of American Football on TV, probably so that all those families who see each other rarely and don't know what to say have something to talk about.
I don't think Thanksgiving is strange or indeed that these family reunions are insincere. But for us they present a problem. We have had a number of invitations over the years, but we've often felt like cuckoos in the heart of someone else's holiday. One year we took ourselves off to New York to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. This year we are at Niagara Falls, crossing another US landmark off our list. Expect lots of pictures here in the next few days...
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