Friday, November 25, 2005

A French Immigrant Looks at Thanksgiving

What a strange holiday that is! A day to offer our thanks, in a complete secular way (if one chose so), for what we have. There is no equivalent anywhere in the world.
I did not always celebrate Thanksgiving. It seemed a weird celebration with strange food...

An American diplomat, Dr. Demarche, writes that July 4th and Thanksgiving are the two holidays he misses most. Christians celebrate it, my family celebrates it, Muslims celebrate it. Even some American Indians celebrate it, for it was also a celebration of the friendship of peoples, before darker incidents occurred to sunder them.

It is a truly American holiday, for why did so many peoples leave their homes for America in the first place, if not to better their lives? And so we give thanks with prayer and such a feast that Thanksgiving is, as Art Buchwald wrote, the one day of the year that Americans eat better than the French do.

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