How Thanksgiving works, as pieced together by a non-American who has watched a lot of television.
Thanksgiving is an American holiday that takes place on the fourth Thursday of Sweeps month. Americans celebrate this holiday by traveling great distances to reunite with family members. A typical American will have an intense disagreement with those family members based on a semi-disturbing secret that is revealed over the course of the meal, but — by holiday’s end — all will be well, perhaps due to a sudden, superficial closeness brought on by a late-afternoon crisis.
Some of the family members will be major Hollywood movie stars.
Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving, in addition to other foods — particularly yams. No one knows what yams are, but they are reportedly delicious and fattening. If an American is unable to join their family (perhaps because they perished in an accident that was both traumatic and character-building for said American) they will meet with friends for the meal.
Instead of taking a team approach to the task of food preparation, one family member/friend will usually bear sole responsibility for cooking the turkey and vegetables. This is a very stressful job, although it will not distract the chef enough to stop him or her (usually her) from making many sharp and witty observations about how little everyone else is doing to help.
During dinner, the participants will make wishes using the bones of their food. Far from being the macabre ritual it would at first appear to be, this is instead a method by which Americans honor the indigent people whose land was stolen by the pilgrims this holiday celebrates. The “wish bone” harkens back to a more magical time when Native American princesses communicated with nature, and befriended raccoons.
At some point in the meal, everyone around the table (or, at least, the important people) will announce what he or she is thankful for. This thing will be, by turns: wacky and hilarious, stupid and obvious, or meaningful and trite. This is also usually the point when any slaps are delivered. Slapping is an extremely popular Thanksgiving tradition.
Thanksgiving food appears to be laced with powerful tranquilizers which, in addition to the typical American’s inability to recognize when their hunger is sated, results in an extremely sleepy group of people. Most Americans will retire to the couch area and watch the Macy’s Day Parade, where the witnessing of inflated cartoon characters creates a sense of relative thinness in the post-meal, bloated viewers. They may also watch the SuperBowl, which is a series of much talked-about advertisements periodically interrupted by former high school bullies in helmets and shoulder pads shouting numbers and running.
Thanksgiving will then be over. No cleanup will take place, and any important events or revelations will never be mentioned again.
Christmas will arrive roughly a week later.
