When you grow up in Britain, you are inundated with American culture from the moment you’re born. We listen to American music, we watch American films and TV shows, we know about American celebrities – even the way we celebrate Halloween, a traditional Celtic holiday, is in some respects downstream from the USA. But while exporting their culture around the world, Americans have kept one card up their sleeves: Thanksgiving, a holiday which I don’t understand, and which intrigues and frustrates me in equal measure. When you think about it, what actually is Thanksgiving?

At primary school, I was taught that it was a holiday celebrating the moment when the Indigenous population of North America quashed their beef with the settlers, sat down for a slap-up meal together and then they all lived happily ever after… but that doesn’t sound right? It’s true that Thanksgiving is a tradition that exists in different forms around the world, but something about the American version eludes me – I just don’t get it, which makes me feel angry and left out! In a good-faith effort to understand this mystifying, arcane tradition, I asked some Americans to explain it.

Thanksgiving is supposedly a huge deal but, from my admittedly British perspective, it doesn’t seem to have left much of a cultural imprint. Where are the classic Thanksgiving films or the Thanksgiving songs?

Nathan: I think essentially every American sitcom has at least one Thanksgiving episode, and it cameos in a lot of Christmas films too as a pregame for Christmas. Also, the day after Thanksgiving is a huge day for American Football, so that factors in too.

Will: You’re not wrong – culturally there’s not a tonne of Thanksgiving media, I think in part because it’s one day and there’s not a whole reason around it in the way that there is for Christmas.

Someone once told me that it’s actually a more important family occasion than Christmas but I struggle to believe that – what percentage of people go home for Thanksgiving? Say you live in New York and your parents live in Utah or Wyoming, are you really travelling all that distance in November and then doing it again a month later? That’s wild...

Nathan: It’s less common than going home for Christmas, although a lot of people do both. I think it’s one of those things that’s used as a bargaining chip within families: ‘we can go to see your mom for Christmas if we spend Thanksgiving with my dad!’

Will: I’d definitely say that for those who also celebrate Christmas, it’s a lesser holiday. Certainly the case for my family – it’s one day and a meal, whereas Christmas usually comprises the day, plus Christmas Eve, and loads of parties. I think people do go home for both if it’s easy enough but if you live far away then going home for Christmas is more likely.

“I think people are increasingly aware that it has a pretty violent history and origin, but culturally it’s ingrained in us as a day to celebrate” – Will

Have people’s attitudes to Thanksgiving changed now there’s an increased understanding of settler colonialism and the genocide and ethnic cleansing experienced by America’s indigenous population? Why are there never stories about ‘the woke mob trying to cancel Thanksgiving’ as there is with Christmas when it seems way more problematic? 

Will: Depending on who you are, it’s definitely problematic! I think people are increasingly aware that it has a pretty violent history and origin, but culturally it’s ingrained in us as a day to celebrate. I think some people choose to not celebrate or to ignore the whitewashed colonial origins and just view it as a day with family or friends.

Nathan: In my opinion, Thanksgiving is an agnostic holiday divorced from the settler colonial mythology behind the USA project. I think Black Friday – and now Cyber Monday – has definitely had a more lasting impact, and a much more horrible one – they are both now global affairs that promote overconsumption. While horrible when framed as nostalgia for the early days of colonialism, I think Thanksgiving is now just a time to be around the people you care about.

And I think the fact that people have and are critically engaging with the celebration of Christopher Columbus as a bank holiday has set a high bar to clear for ‘woke gone mad’ stories about people trying to cancel Thanksgiving.

Finally, I heard that people in the US eat ‘mashed sweet potato with marshmallows on top’ – surely this can’t be true???

Will: It definitely is a thing although it was never really a family tradition for me. Generally, all the food tends to vary depending on family and regional taste.

Nathan: Yeah, it’s disgusting. The bottom of the barrel of midwestern culture. They’ll have sweet potatoes doused in orange juice, bourbon and sometimes maple syrup, baked with marshmallows on top. The marshmallows are somehow the least offensive part.

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