Steal back Thanksgiving — it’s as English as apple pie

IT MAY pass many Londoners by, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving. One of the delights of marrying an American is that my wife and I celebrate it every year. We sit down with large groups of friends to plates of roasted everything. Once, back when we rented a big house in Haringey with five others, we had 38 for a sit-down meal. We OD’d on giving thanks that year, but mostly it is wonderful. Food, friends, goodwill. What’s not to love?

Lots, apparently. One columnist had a go at this “tacky American import” yesterday. Unless you’re an expat, “why bother trying to force this alien festival down our throats?” he demanded. Don’t listen to Thanksgiving Scrooges. It’s marvellous.

The story behind the “First Thanksgiving” in Massachusetts in 1621 may be much mythologised but it is charming at its heart. The local Patuxet people helped to teach the Pilgrims — who were rapidly dying off having failed to cultivate much at all — how to live off the land. In gratitude, the tribe was invited to join a feast in a sadly rare example of collaboration between the colonists and Native Americans.

Nowadays Thanksgiving has a similar “goodwill-to-all-men” spirit to Christmas but without the stress of having to worry about what gifts to get everyone. It is an encouragement to put aside differences to sit at a table and eat together. It’s exactly what Brexit Britain needs, in other words.

Don’t know any American expats? Doesn’t matter. Whisper it, but behind all the Americana imagery Thanksgiving is sort of secretly English, isn’t it? The Pilgrim settlers were English immigrants from Plymouth and the ceremony of the feast itself directly draws from Michaelmas harvest celebrations. Sorry, America. Thanksgiving is as English as apple pie (yes, that’s ours too — the first recorded recipe is from Richard II’s court).

For the past few years British retailers have jumped at the opportunity to promote Black Friday (that is, the special offers that appear the day after Thanksgiving designed to jolt shoppers into a spree of Christmas spending). We are now in the perverse situation of having

Black Friday but no Thanksgiving. That’s like having the hangover without the great party. Let’s steal Thanksgiving back.