Thanksgiving is the second most "American" holiday — right behind the red white and blue-blazing-BBQ-hot-dog-eating fourth day of July. Of course, I have celebrated the fourth of July — I mean who doesn’t like fireworks and overcooked burgers? But what I have never celebrated is that other day surrounding eating and drinking.
I have never celebrated Thanksgiving Day.
Everyone always gives me a weird look when I say I am not doing anything for Thanksgiving. I get asked if I hate America. I get asked if I hate pie. Of course not! I am a gun-shooting-flag above-my-bed-patriotic American for goodness sake! And not to brag or anything but I make a mean key lime pie. It’s just that, for my family, Thanksgiving is just another Thursday when everything is closed. Well, almost everything. The fact that not everything in a large metropolitan area can close is exactly why I have never eaten myself into a food coma from overly-salted stuffing.
My family immigrated to the United States when I was five years old. Thanksgiving is not celebrated anywhere else in the world (well except for Canada but like it’s Canada: it doesn’t count). There were no traditions set in place. There was no family to go see. There weren’t even colorful leaves to rake into a pile to jump into (I lived in Florida). So when everyone asked for the day off, my parents jumped on the opportunity to work time and a half to provide for their children in this new country.
My parents left a safe haven rich with family history to give my sister and me the opportunity to choose whatever path we wanted in life. In Morocco, you are a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Otherwise you are broke and no one will want to marry you, at least that’s what my grandmother keeps telling me. If you want to own your own home and send your kids to college, "the American Dream," you have to work. So my parents went to work at six A.M. on the fourth Thursday of November while my sister and I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I mean, college is expensive and mortgage payments are always due! It’s not like we were giving up on anything, there simply was never any traditions already set in place. So yes I go about my day on that lovely Thursday in November, just like any other Thursday, just like the rest of the world.
And then we have Black Friday. Now that is America!
