In Which I Wonder At Marching Bobble-Heads

After almost four months in the United States, I've readjusted in many ways. I no longer use the Greek words for 'Excuse Me' and 'Thank You', I expect the stores to be open on Sundays, I no longer think 27/11 is a date in a strange new month, and my red wine consumption has rapidly fallen. This saddens me constantly, but I console myself with Indian food, the Sunday New York Times Crossword Puzzle, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
However, American holidays are still a novelty. Perhaps a better way to say that is this: holidays are still a novelty, no matter what their nationality. When you live abroad, you become used to regarding holidays with a mixture of curiosity and anthropological objectivity. When it's not your holiday, you don't have any of the nostalgic excitement for it that you associate with the holidays you have celebrated since childhood. Instead, you just spend a lot of time staring wide-eyed and wondering and trying to figure out why everyone is dressed up today. (Or, in Greece, you wonder why all of the stores are closed and discover that it is the day of a saint that you have never heard of.)
So now that I'm back in the States, I don't think I've quite stopped looking at holidays as objects of curiosity, even when they are as familiar as my front door. Anything is a novelty when you've been away long enough, and a normal Thanksgiving is something I haven't had in a while. Last year I was in Greece. Two years ago I spent countless horrid hours fighting through delays in Des Moines and O'Hare due to a snowstorm and arrived home just in time for the turkey, completely exhuasted. Three years ago I had a minor passport problem at London Stansted airport and ended up taking a very long unexpected overnight train ride to Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh completely exhausted and just in time to spend Thanksgiving touring castles and kilt factories.
As holidays go, I generally think Thanksgiving is a good one. I know that if you look back into history, you will not find that the story of the first Thanksgiving is as happy as many Americans would like to believe. I know that Europeans did terrible things to the Native Americans. I know that the traditional "First Thanksgiving" story has some real historical inaccuracies in it. However, I also think that for many Americans, Thanksgiving is only vaguely associated with pilgrims, and very much associated with food. That's the way holidays work, isn't it? Christmas is supposedly about the birth of Jesus, but most people are much more concerned with trimming their trees and exchanging presents than they are with the religious aspect. Easter is also supposedly Christian, but the eggs are Pagan in origin, and I haven't the slightest idea where the bunny came from. And somewhere along the line Halloween stopped being an night where you stayed in and hid from evil spirits, and started being a night when little kids wandered the streets and ate themselves sick.
This year, I tried to look at Thanksgiving as a foreigner might. Some aspects of the celebration can be universally appreciated, I think; people from all nations can appreciate good food and spending a day with family and friends.
On the other hand, there's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Now, for the first nineteen or twenty years of my life, I attended the parade every year, without fail. I would wake up at dawn, head down to Central Park West in the wee hours of the morning, and spend five or so hours in my pink snowsuit, or my ski pants, or my puffy coat, drinking hot chocolate and watching inflatable cartoon characters and high school baton twirlers who look like their legs are going to freeze off. I think I might have given up at the age of fourteen or fifteen if it weren't for those baton twirlers. It can be pretty cold out there, but if they could smile with bare arms poking out of their sparkly bathing suits, I could survive in my parka.
For those years, the parade was just a normal part of Thanksgiving, like cranberry sauce and lasagna. (Yes, my grandmother makes lasagna on Thanksgiving. We eat it after the mozzarella and pepper and before the turkey and stuffing. That might sound odd to someone who does not have Italian heritage, but I've talked to people of Scandinavian descent, and trust me, they have some much stranger holiday foods.) In over twenty years, I've never slept in on a Thanksgiving. I always either rose at the crack of dawn for the parade, or because I was in the middle of a transportation nightmare. Last year, in Greece, I think I awoke at 7am. It was the latest I'd slept in a lifetime of Thanksgivings.

This year, I had a traditional Thanksgiving; I woke up at 5, walked my neighbor's dog, and went to the parade, in the rain. I was not overly enthused by the prospect, but I was due to meet a large number of good friends there, and I succumbed to peer pressure. Some people succumb to peer pressure and wear stupid clothes, some end up hooked on nictotine, and some end up very very wet at an early hour on Central Park West.

After four years, the parade seemed both nostalgic and new. I remembered Thanksgivings of my childhood, watching the high school marching bands back when they looked so old and glamorous. I thought of seeing the giant Garfield when he looked not just big, but larger than most houses. I recalled the excitement of seeing Santa Clause and feeling that Christmas was in the air.

I also looked at Bobble-headed pilgrims and thought, wow, what a completely bizarre way to honor one's ancestors. Is there any other nation that honors their founders by having normal sized people walk around with giant inflated ancestor faces? Is there any other nation that celebrates their heritage by parading very wet pop stars down the street on giant rolling castles and pirate ships? We are really weird, aren't we?

I recently read the book Lies My Teacher Told Me, which is essentially an indictment of the way American history is taught in our schools. I agreed with many of the criticisms made by the author, but when he criticized Thanksgiving for minimizing down the cruelty of Europeans toward Native Americans, I had mixed feelings. We absolutely do need to a do a better job of recognizing the horrors in our own past, but for me Thanksgiving has little to do with pilgrims, and much to do with my own personal traditions. If we attack Thanksgiving for being a celebration of cruelty, we should also attack every religious holiday on the calendar for doing something similar. I particularly like Thanksgiving because it does (or can) cross religious and cultural borders, that it can belong to everyone, and because appreciating the things you have is usually a good thing. If you look back to the Native Americans, it's a holiday that is probably rooted in the absolute worst of American traditions, but these days I think it can embody the best of American traditions. After all, it was really started by Abraham Lincoln as a celebration of unity after the Civil War.

And maybe the pilgrims had bobble heads for a metaphorical reason. Those pilgrims and their inflated egos! They thought they were better than everyone! Oh, those big-headed ancestors of mine! Thank goodness I'm more culturally aware than they were!

(I'm trying, anyway.)