November 26, 2008

Ta

It's one of those familiar little cultural rites for Britons and Australians in the US around this time; it happens to me every year without fail: some friendly well-intentioned American (usually a checkout clerk or someone like that) asks me how we celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia or Britain. I'm always tempted to reply with something glib and unpleasant about how we all give thanks for not being American, but it's easier to just smile and give some sort of non-committal response and ask them how they'll be celebrating their Thanksgiving. It's just one of those things here that you learn to play along with, like the assumption on pretty much every official form that everyone has a middle initial (and only one middle initial), and that every address in every country has something called a "zip code", or that all phone numbers world-wide are exactly ten digits long…

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Posted by Jimmy Little @ 23:26; permalink

2 Comments:

At 11/28/2008 12:35 pm, Blogger Phil said...

there aren't too many kids in my area any more but the few that exist all do the halloween thing which is another american export that i have no connection with. these poor kids get all dressed up and mope around to houses like ours where the occupants say "halloween! what's that? sorry i don't have any candy. and you do mean lollies, don't you?"

 
At 11/28/2008 1:41 pm, Blogger Jimmy Little said...

Phil — funny you should mention halloween… When I first got here and asked about the ubiquitous Halloween thing, I was met with incredulous looks — Halloween's a British Thing, don't you know?! Or so I'm repeatedly told. Never mind that — as with Australia — kids out doing Halloween in Britain are mostly doing it because they've seen it being done on American TV…

 

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