ABSTRACT
Though traditions are invented and nations imagined, Thanksgiving is a day on which all persons who consider themselves Americans celebrate or avoid a ritual family feast, centered around a stuffed turkey. For many it is a four-day holiday, a precious long weekend. Football games are scheduled and televised throughout the nation; an elaborately constructed, now-traditional Macy’s parade may be viewed. There are special services, which some attend, and turkeys and other foods are given by churches and other charitable organizations to the poor. Servicemen overseas are fed the traditional Thanksgiving dinner at great public expense. There are those who counterculturally contest the mythic representations of this day; there are those who firmly decide not to go home or not to eat turkey, but it is impossible to be an American and be unaware of Thanksgiving. If “American culture is whatever one cannot escape in the United States” (Varenne, 1986: 6), then Thanksgiving is inescapably part of American culture.
