Dear Meghan, get ready for a very British Thanksgiving
As the Duchess of Sussex prepares for her first American holiday as a royal, sympathises
Sally PeckToday, will be my 14th British Thanksgiving. So I feel it is only fair – having long celebrated this most American of occasions as a New Yorker in London – to share my hard-won expertise with the Duchess of Sussex. Meghan is about to experience her first Thanksgiving in the UK, having married Prince Harry in May (last year, a week before their engagement was announced, she decamped to LA to carve the turkey with her mother, Doria) and reports suggest she is planning to serve up a spread at Kensington Palace.
Which sounds very jolly. But a word of warning, Meghan: Thanksgiving in Britain is a strange beast indeed.
As the first member of my family since the Mayflower to reverse migrate, every year, as the fourth Thursday of November looms, I go on the offensive. Thanksgiving may be my favourite holiday, but in Britain it has always been a minefield (even the word “holiday” raises eyebrows).
Yet, in 2018, it seems Thanksgiving is establishing itself as a “thing” on this side of the pond – one in six Brits now celebrate it, according to a new study. I suspect this is largely because it’s seen as another chance for an annual boozefest. It is particularly popular among millennials, the generation raised on Friends, who see it as a chance to sit down for a “festive” meal with pals, ahead of Christmas with (possibly) less desirable relatives.
Which is all great, but they don’t really get it. If I had a pound for every person who has Brit-splained Thanksgiving to me by proclaiming it to be the “American Christmas”, I’d have already paid for this year’s Ginger Pig organic turkey – surely a contender for Meghan’s first British Thanksgiving bird which, according to her former lifestyle blog The Tig, she has been known to barbecue (good luck with trying that in the grounds of Kensington Palace).
Let’s be clear on this: Thanksgiving is not a substitute for Christmas. Come Dec 25, Christian Americans don’t look the other way just because they ate turkey a month earlier. They devote just as much energy to Christ’s birthday as their British cousins; they just eat ham, beef or nutloaf. Moreover, it’s like a buffer, shoehorning the hullabaloo of Christmas shopping and decorating into one month. Not so in Britain, where people work up absurd levels of enthusiasm from October, even creating a British Black Friday.
Another misunderstanding, Meghan will find, is the pies. As a nation, Britain is very protective of the pie – steak and kidney, the inexplicable suet crust. Sweet Thanksgiving pies, therefore, are seen as an affront to the British dinner plate – as if we Americans are
‘Let’s be clear on this: Thanksgiving is not a substitute for Christmas’
attempting a reverse pudding-based Pilgrim invasion. Though, admittedly and counter-intuitively, Thanksgiving pies may contain vegetables (my aunt is known for saying she’ll make pumpkin pie, only to turn up with sweet potato). Score one for nutrition if you can locate the beta-carotene within all that sugar.
While we’re on the subject, not all Americans eat sweet potatoes with marshmallows. I don’t know anyone who does, because that would be disgusting. There is also no excuse for frog’s-eye salad, which involves no reptiles but pasta and tinned fruit, and is, allegedly, popular in the Midwest – though, ironically, sounds like just the sort of bizarre confection Meghan might get past the Royals. They are known to be practical jokers, after all.
My New England family enjoys “cranberry bread” – a loaf with fruit and walnuts – with its main meal. We have done so for centuries and will not stop now, even when my British husband reminds me that our English guests find it unsettling to be served what is essentially pound cake with turkey. Incidentally, The New York Times says sourdough stuffing with kale, dates and turkey sausage is the most typical dish from Meghan’s native California; her guests, it would seem, are in for more of a treat than mine.
But what the British really struggle with when it comes to Thanksgiving – and you will have your work cut out here, Meghan – is the sentiment. In the same way Americans say “Have a nice day” and mean it, Thanksgiving brings out the earnest in people. We don’t all get out our gratitude journals (give it time), but we do go around the table, listing the things we are thankful for from the past 12 months. And it’s nice. If it’s tricky for our two countries to agree on the food, it’s nigh on impossible for a Brit to abandon self-deprecation in favour of such effusive verbal displays.
That said, in the year that Meghan joined the Firm and is expecting the seventh in line to the throne, you might say that Prince Harry has a lot to be grateful for – as long as he doesn’t have to eat frog’s-eye salad.