Thanksgiving

I realize we have different cultures within this group. I'm sure the reason that the U.S. historically has celebrated Thanksgiving and that Canada has celebrated Thanksgiving are quite different. I am unaware of other cultures and what they may celebrate in November. I thought it would be nice to describe any November celebrations or rituals you have. Can't wait to hear from you!

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot".

On 5th November in England we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night, or Fireworks Night), to remember the thwarted plot to blow up parliament with gunpowder under the House of Lords on that day in 1605. We light a bonfire, let off fireworks, roast potatoes and chestnuts, and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes. At least we did before "Elf and Safe Tea"* became the trend - I'm not sure what we're allowed to do these days. Children would make the Guy out of old clothes stuffed with rags or newspaper and push him around in a baby's push chair (are those things called "buggies" these days?) shouting, "Penny for the Guy!" to collect money to buy fireworks (back in the days when children were still allowed to buy fireworks). It used to be a great night for everybody except the fire brigade and the hospitals.

Back in the 17th century Protestant-Catholic religious division was big in England, and the gunpowder plot was an attempt to assassinate the protestant king. Guy Fawkes Night became an anti-Catholic event. That has largely fallen by the wayside, although in the town of Lewes they still burn an effigy of the pope instead of Guy Fawkes.

Sadly Guy Fawkes Night is nowadays being overshadowed by Hallowe'en, which falls just a few days earlier. While Hallowe'en is an old feast day with indigenous, Celtic and Christian roots, it was not really marked in England, and the modern commercialised version of it is an import from the USA. There's more money to be made by capitalists out of selling masks and costumes and all the paraphernalia than there is out of home-made Guys, bonfires and the ever-decreasing sale of fireworks.

* Health and Safety, for those not familiar with the satire.

We celebrate with family, turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and the fixings.

>2 John5918: TY John, that is most interesting! I read briefly in some history text about Guy Fawkes, but you have filled in some gaps.

As families fracture -- either through natural growth or for more traumatic reasons -- customs change. I grew up with the turkey/cranberry sauce/pumpkin pie "traditional" Thanksgiving, first at my maternal grandparents' house and then at my parents' house.

Eventually, geography became too much to overcome, and we began our own, very similar, Thanksgiving with our own children. (The first thing to disappear from the menu, however, was "scalloped oysters", which I could never stand!)

As the kids grew up, I spent 10 years working for a large organization whose annual convention was always held the weekend after Thanksgiving. For those of us responsible for planning and pulling off this major 4-day event, it meant at least a month of 60-hour weeks. Thanksgiving sort of got shuffled aside -- complicated by the fact that our wedding anniversary is November 25, and I hold the totally unreasonable (to my kids) position that I am not going to spend my wedding anniversary cooking a huge feast for everybody else to enjoy.

So Thanksgiving is just not that big a deal any more. Adult daughter has taken it on and we have been with her and her family for a couple of years now. Sounds reasonable to me.

She usually cooks turkey AND ham and tons of side dishes, many with ethnic sides that reflect her extended/blended family. There are usually around 25-30 people wandering in and out, and it's self-serve buffet style instead of a formal sit-down meal.

My children do most of the cooking, as they are so much better at it than I am. The only required item is sour cream potatoes, by unanimous vote. I manage table decorations with the grands and the washing up. And I make the blackberry cordial.
We’ve met at oldest daughter's house for the last couple of decades for convenience. She has the biggest crew and the biggest table. I’ve just moved into what I’m calling my retirement Celebration House, though. We’re planning an outside dinner on my covered deck; unless it’s freezing or storming.

My mother cooked for seventy (70) relatives, mostly on her side of the family, for decades, in a large house my folks owned in northern New Jersey.
With my siblings, Thanksgiving mornings were spent dismantling beds and moving them all into the smallest bedroom so we could make space for 8-foot folding tables and chairs. There were two large tables in the dining room, one that straddled a large archway between the dining room and the living room, and three more there. Plus five tables in four bedrooms upstairs.
Both of our nextdoor neighbors always spent Thanksgiving elsewhere, and they gave my mother the keys to their houses so she could cook three turkeys (that were alive until dawn that morning -- Nana had connections) simultaneously.
As her generation got to retirement age, and the older my-generation cousins and siblings went off to college, the numbers began to dwindle. But as long as my folks were there, that's where we had Thanksgiving, and she cooked for only twenty at the last one.
Before they sold the house and moved to Florida, my mother gifted me "the turkey platter." I've seen several others just like it, but this one has been passed down through three generations already. She gave it to me because: 1) I owned a home a mere hour's drive from theirs (proximity) and had a family (most likely to make use of it); and 2) I have a congenital digestive disorder that makes several commonly used foods and herbs/spices deadly to me. (Currently recovering from an overabundance of onion juice in a container of chicken broth I used to make chicken soup about three weeks ago -- hundreds of small ulcers throughout; currently unable to speak because some are on/near the vocal cords.)
Funny aside: When she presented to platter to me, she explained why, plus gave me a verbal history of how it came into the family, and a few short narratives of Thanksgiving dinners past, et cetera, and with much more care than she ever used handling any of my siblings as infants, placed it on the kitchen table. A few seconds later, it cracked almost halfway through. (I'm still laughing about it.) I took it home, glued it up and secured it with a furniture strap clamp. I've used it almost every year since, and it's still holding. End-aside.
Since 1984, I've been hosting Thanksgiving. Initially, for the siblings and cousins who were in the NY/NJ area, until I moved to Texas in 1989, at which time, it was just me, my wife (ThiMs), and my three sons. That is, until the divorce started, and then it was every other year for a while with just the boys and me, but being that ThiMs insisted that they also have dinner with her as well. So, I cooked a much smaller bird, and other food.
Then I met MrsHouseLibrary, and despite my providing them detailed information about what I could not eat, I ended up paying a large price for things they unthinkingly included.
For the next 15 years, I hosted Thanksgiving in our home for her family and mine -- over twenty. MrsHouseLibrary (Karrell) died early November two years ago. There was no Thanksgiving that year, anywhere. And last year, I wasn't interested in ever doing it again. Nor this year, and it's not a matter of the fact my innards are pockmarked with small ulcers (well, that is a factor, but it's just another day with nothing to celebrate anymore.

>7 WholeHouseLibrary: WOW! I can't imagine cooking for 70!

I have 2 sons (ages 40 and 41), their spouses and 7 grandchildren ranging in ages from 2-20. My mother is alive and very healthy at age 87. I have a sister in Arizona, who usually doesn't make it home for Thanksgiving. So that's 14 that I cook for. Although, this year I'm handing Thanksgiving off to my son (the one with 6 children) and I'll continue to do Christmas. I'm so blessed that my children and grandchildren live within 15 minutes of my home. Some say it would be a curse, but to me it's a blessing. The 20 year old stopped by unannounced yesterday just to see if we needed anything! My usual Thanksgiving dinner would be: turkey, sage dressing, scalloped potatoes, sweet potato casserole, dilled green beans, several appetizers/dips, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and a cake. After our big dinner, we retreat to the parlor (the women and children) and read aloud Thanksgiving books and play Thanksgiving songs on the piano and sing! The day after Thanksgiving (Friday) we put up the Christmas trees (2 of them), decorate the mantel and put out my 30-40 nativity sets I've collected throughout the year. Most of my shopping is done by September, so when the house is decorated, I'm ready for Christmas.

>7 WholeHouseLibrary: I checked your profile. My husband and I lived on Sam Bass Road and moved back to Minnesota in 1995. My hometown is Monahans and I miss Texas. You have quiet a story. Thanks for sharing.

>2 John5918:

Remember, remember: from slow roast brisket to cinder toffee – the 10 best Bonfire Night treats (Guardian)

Dishes for fireworks night need to be warming and easy to eat while wearing mittens...

I have to say that some of these don't look very traditional to me, and I'm sorry they don't mention roast chestnuts, but times they are a-changing and they certainly all look good to eat!

>2 John5918:

And here's Spitting Image's take on Bonfire Night and blowing up parliament. It starts at about 0:36.

Boris and Cummings Plot To Blow Up Parliament

>12 John5918: Oh just too funny! I only have one question, Boris eating lard? Why lard?

>13 Tess_W:

Not sure, to be honest. Maybe it's because he's called upon Britons to eat healthy food and take exercise, neither of which he will probably do himself. I believe well known satirist Ian Hislop has referred to Boris as "a tub of lard". In ages past lard was looked on, if not as a luxury, at least as something to be desired which not everybody could afford all the time, so maybe he's just symbolically stuffing himself with good things. Greedy bastard.

>14 John5918: LOL, lard is nothing more than pig fat, and they can't give it away in the U.S. It is being used in lipsticks, motor oil, and who knows what else. Although, my mother and grandmother say it makes the best pie crust (I've not bought any to try).

>15 Tess_W:

Yes, the same is probably true in UK these days, but going back to the days of austerity after World War II lard was a valuable commodity. We also used to eat a lot of suet in those days, and out of nostalgia I still occasionally cook myself a bacon and onion suet pudding which my mum used to make when I were a lad (and which my non-British wife won't touch!) It was a way of providing the family with a stomach-filling meal cheaply.

Edited to add: I don't think one can ever ignore the effect that the war had on the British psyche. I was born in 1954, long after the war finished, but rationing only ended that same year, and the discipline of austerity had been instilled into our parents' generation. The larder was always stocked with tins of food, "just in case", and any sort of waste was frowned upon. Virtually every adult man that we knew (fathers, uncles, neighbours, teachers, etc) had been in the armed forces, and many of the women too (my mum was a radar operator for the anti-aircraft guns). Those who hadn't been in uniform had experienced the blitz, the threat of invasion, and the shortages of everything. Nowadays I suppose we would recognise that they were traumatised by the experience, but PTSD was not part of the vocabulary in those days. Stiff upper lip, grin and bear it, soldier on, keep calm and carry on, have a cuppa tea! It was all still very fresh in their memories, and it was passed on to the post-war generation. All the childhood comics we read were full of war stories, and we used to play at being soldiers. I had my dad's old Sam Browne belt and holster for my toy pistol. In the London I grew up in there were empty bomb sites everywhere, where the rubble had been cleared but no rebuilding had yet taken place. We used to play around a pond in a nearby field which was a V2 crater. Unexploded German bombs were being found regularly (they still are, but much more rarely now).

Sorry, that was off topic, but it came to mind with the mention of lard, suet and austerity.

Tubs of lard are sold in the grocery store in with the mexican foods. I keep a sealed container of it in my larder (HA!) for just in case of shortages. My parents from the same era had the identical mindset. But I believe it was inherited from their parents' experiences during the Great Depression or their childhoods in the 30s. Until her death, my father's mother licked her plate clean.

My father lived through the depression and when the meat (slaughtered pig, chickens, and cow) ran out, they would use lard as butter and have lard gravy over toast. He said his mother would pack him 2 lard sandwiches to take to school each day. He said kids would beg him for his 2nd sandwich they were so hungry. In 1936 my grandfather got a job with the WPA where he loaded logs felled in a forest onto a flatbed truck. He was paid $5 per week (for 40 hours) and a 20lb. bag of potatoes; sometimes a 5 lb. bag of onions. Unfortunately this job only lasted a year and then they were hungry for 2 more years until WWII ended the Great Depression.

>18 Tess_W:

We used to eat "bread and dripping", spreading pork fat onto a slice of bread in place of butter. Often the bread would be toasted in front of the coal fire which was an essential feature of British households before central heating appeared. It was only in the 1960s that we installed central heating in our house, but as late as the 1980s I had friends who still didn't have it. You'd wake up of a winter morning with ice on the inside of the windows. Reminds me of a comment by a Danish colleague while attending a conference in a rambling and draughty church institution in London as recently as 2002: "Why do you British insist on building your houses as if you live in a warm climate?!" And talking of churches, one of the pleasant surprises for me when I first visited the USA was that you can take your coat off when you attend a church service. British churches were far too cold and draughty for that, and you remained huddled in your coats, scarves and gloves trying to stay warm.

WWII ended the Great Depression

Interesting. For the USA WWII ended the Great Depression; for Britain WWII began the great austerity, which lasted probably into the early 1960s.

>19 John5918: Nothing like a war to stimulate the economy!;)

Not making light of British winters, but pshaw! We have to build houses to withstand bitter cold (sometimes -20 F) with sheets of ice. I grew up in a farmhouse (but we weren't farmers) where the upstairs was only heated by gravity. All the kids bedrooms were upstairs. Sometimes when we woke in the morning we also had iced over windows and icicles hanging from inside the windows. Sometimes we were sent to bed with a nice warm hot water bottle for our feet. Then in the summer, sometimes the temp. would be 100 F and it was so hot up there that my mother would let us sleep on the porch with a sleeping bag. Us kids thought that was great fun--but it didn't happen too often. Currently, although our home is heated and cooled by electrical heat pump/air conditioning, we are very frugal when using it. I don't like paying utility bills! We try to wait until July 1 to turn on air and soon as it cools to 80 degrees, it's off. We buy 2-3 cords of wood and have a Buck cast iron insert for our fireplace, thus reducing our dependence on the furnace. Since Oct. 1 we have run neither air conditioner nor furnace. We are having Indian Summer in November, rarely heard of.