Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Thanksgiving in South Africa

Thanksgiving Day, celebrated in the USA on the fourth Thursday in November, at the end of the harvest season, is an annual American Federal holiday to express thanks for one's material and spiritual possessions. The period from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day often is called the holiday season. Most people celebrate by gathering at home with family or friends for a holiday feast. Though the holiday's origins can be traced to harvest festivals that have been celebrated in many cultures since ancient times, the American holiday has religious undertones related to the deliverance of the English settlers by Native Americans after the brutal winter at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Or as some people call Thanksgiving, Turkey Day. The tradition all over the country is to gather family and friends together and eat a big turkey with the traditional side dishes like mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sause or jelly, stuffing and pumpkin or pecan pie. Yummy, but heavy duty ;-)

This year we and most of our friends here in SA are going away for the long weekend, so we celebrated already Thanksgiving last weekend at our friends' home. They did the deep fried turkey, since most of us never had it and these friends are from Texas, so we got a traditional Texas way of cooking the turkey. It was really juicy and tender and the crispy skin was yummy!

Coming weekend (actually we are driving off tomorrow morning) we are at the coast of Durban, to Sheffield beach or as they call that area, Dolphin coast, to relax a few days and enjoy the sand and sea and sun! Not so traditional but very much fun! We have a little house directly on the beach where the girls can find their creepy crawlers and we can read many books. Sounds good to me!

Happy Thanksgiving all!
I am probably not posting for a few days...
Mireille

2 comments:

Mandy said...

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your meal was fab!

Maci Miller said...

Okay, you have just made me VERY hungry!! Sounds wonderful! Have a great trip and I will catch up with you when you get back. Still working on your email and will probably have that waiting for you when you get back!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jen

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails