Easy on the Turkey

President Harry S Truman admiring a Thanksgiving turkey in 1950. Presidents have annually "pardoned" one of the delicious fowls since JFK. The Guardian has a slideshow of past presidents getting the bird.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The Passengers wish we could be close to our nearest and dearest Americans to enjoy the holiday. Instead it's a normal working day in Singapore. We do get the gift of a public holiday tomorrow but not because of any navigationally challenged religious dissidents. It's the time for pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims, Hari Raya Haji in Malay. The Passengers will do Thanksgiving with a number of expatriates and sympathetic Singaporeans on Sunday evening.

The Thanksgiving holiday in America provides a number of benefits. Firstly, the occasion is secular and can be enjoyed by anyone willing to participate. It seems especially fitting as a reminder of the immigrant beginnings of our national experiment. Along with the absence of creedal partisanship, Thanksgiving celebrations are hardly commercial, mostly an excuse to eat as much food as possible while spending time with family or friends. There is, of course, NFL football and a parade with marching bands to watch. Yes, Americans can only go so long without shopping. The day after Thanksgiving, also a public holiday, marks the opening of the Christmas shopping season ("Black Friday") with "doorbuster (link to this year's Wal-Mart circular)" offers to those who can wait in the cold for a big-box retailer to open at 5:00 AM. It's a rather crass coda to a national tradition, but Thanksgiving continues to play an important role in keeping the Christmas decorations and holiday jingles off the cultural landscape at least until December is a reasonable possibility. In Singapore the Christmas decorations went up before November, in part because of all the visiting dignitaries for the APEC Summit earlier this month.