montyfood

Us Brits are always at least five hours ahead of the You Ess of Ay, so it seems an strangely empty gesture to be a whole week ahead of a stateside national holiday. Because, loyal reader, tonight I am off to a Thanksgiving dinner. I and a cadre of friends have been celebrating this peculiarly American of feasts for the past several years or so. We're ameriphiles or something. It's a chance to get together and have good food and good conversation with good friends.

But why tonight? Actual bona fide genu-wine Thanksgiving is still seven days hence. You'd think after a few years practice we'd have understood the whole thing, rather than acting like a hindu who doesn't know when Christmas Day is. By way of blame-shifting I'm pointing the finger squarely at Stephen Fry. In his recent BBC series where he taxied around the States at, let's face it, our expense (note to non-Brits: the BBC is funded by Britannia's humble citizens in the form of a TV licence), Fry was in the "Deep South" for Thanksgiving. His voiceover intoned that this national event took place on the "third Thursday in November". Like ignoramii, Mrs Food and I took the QI trivia master at his word and made sure we marked off 20 November 2008 in our diaries. When our dinner hosts sent out invites to the meal marked a week later than we had expected, we thought they had got it wrong. But Wikipedia confirmed we had been duped by an ill-informed member of the British intelligentsia. The very thought! Unfortunately by then the wife had got something else planned for the fourth Thursday so everybody had to revolve their social plans around us. Bloody Stephen Fry.

So, it's a Franksgiving (named after FDR who plumped for the third Thursday before Congress passed an act in 1941 pinning the national vacation for the fourth Thursday of the month), or as I prefer a Fakesgiving. I guess it means that tomorrow I can officially start looking forward to Christmas. Actually, much as I love Christmas, I think I can wait one more week for that.