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COLUMN ........................... Amy Holtz The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan There’s a fairly persistent rumour about Thanksgiving being bigger than Christmas in America. Fount of Yankee knowledge though I am, the honest truth is I’m not really sure. There’s the big meal, of course, which my family doesn’t have at Christmas – turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and, I shudder, pumpkin pie. On the whole, the holiday is about eating as much as possible, which means fighting your distant relatives off with sharp elbows, and then rushing to the basement to avoid doing the dishes and falling into a heavy tryptophaninduced coma on the sofa while the Vikings lose to some third-rate team like Green Bay, which is punctuated by commercials for Viagra (after all, Christmas is coming up) and all the electronics you don’t need but tend to buy en masse the next day – Black Friday. (For my part, I’m very sorry about importing this consumerist tradition into your hallowed realm). For me, it was always about getting through the main meal, pretending to eat as much as possible, so that I could clean up on apple pie covered in my all-time favourite high fructose corn syrup delicacy, Cool Whip. Grandma would be encouraged to imbibe a thimble full of sweet, pink ‘wine’ and the schnauzers would be gated in the living room which they’d bum rush till someone let them in; then they’d get lots of leftovers, which Grandma would scold us for until the ‘wine’ kicked in, and then she wouldn’t stop giggling. As a child you’re excited because it’s the last big hurdle until the pipe dream of Christmas presents starts to materialise; as an adult it’s the best holiday ever because you get to sleep in the middle of the day. It’s been ages since I’ve been home for Thanksgiving. But I’m not the only ex-pat in town, so my softball team, the Beachcombers, started our own little <strong>Brighton</strong> Thanksgiving a few years back. We’re much smarter, of course, than our forebears, because we use paper plates and our palettes are much more sophisticated where wine is concerned. Despite this, inevitably, everyone gets drunk and makes poor choices, in music and otherwise. Last year, we played the new card-based version of every American child’s favourite Minnesotan Apple II homesteading game – The Oregon Trail. Each of us died terrible deaths in turn of dysentery, typhoid, cholera, snake bite and hypothermia; but as they say, it’s the journey, not the destination that matters, even when it comes to wagon-train emigration. But the important thing that has carried over, from my grandparents’ house to our flats, is that everyone takes a moment to say what they’re thankful for. Back in the day, it tended to generate a lot of waffle about ‘blessings’ and ‘thankfulness’, while you stared in vain at the food you had to get through in order level up to dessert. But nowadays – and it sounds a bit silly, I know – reflecting on your year and on your, ahem, blessings (however agnostic you’d prefer them to be) feels kind of nice. And, this year, as we share these special moments with the ones we like and love, there’s always the enduring hope that the long-overdue reckoning the turkeys have been hatching for the past 390 or so years may finally kick off. Perhaps just as the President does his pardoning bit. ....43....