15 years ago | Haines City, Florida, USA| 27th November 2008

Fifteen years ago,  I was preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving in America, for the very first time.

I’d been to the United States many times before: Florida in 1989 and 1991, Colorado, Texas and New York in 1994, Florida again in 2000 and 2001 and then Las Vegas in 2002. These visits had taken place, variously, in January, March, August, September, October and early November. I’d crossed the Atlantic fourteen times but I’d never been in the country for the fourth Thursday of November – Thanksgiving.

We were invited to go with friends to their villa in Haines City, south of Orlando. This was our first visit since becoming parents and our friends also had a four year-old son. It was a very chilled week – much more so than our previous Florida holidays. We did a few theme parks but our budget and our small child meant that this would be a very different Florida experience.

Add in that it was off-season and that everything would be expensive and busy on Thanksgiving Day itself so we decided to stay at the villa and have a ‘traditional’, relaxed version of the holiday, at home. We went shopping and got a turkey and all the various trimmings, including the yams – although we preferred a New York cheesecake to a pecan pie.

Back at the villa, it was still warm enough to use the pool and I learned that it’s a Thanksgiving Day tradition that the Dallas Cowboys (often styled as “America’s Team”) will invariably be the first live game of the day, around lunchtime – something that I’ve seen repeated most years since.

We Skyped home in the morning and ironically wished everyone ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’. Then we set the table and swam/watched the game. As the sun set, we served up the feast, which was basically a Christmas dinner in all but name, and then, also like Christmas, flopped onto the couch to watch a film (‘Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull’) on the TV.

The experience also taught me something that I’d bring home with me. The day before Thanksgiving, we drove past a retail park and noticed a cluster of tents pitched outside the entrance to Target, the massive CostCo-on-steroids hypermarket. ”Oh, that’s people camping out for Black Friday”, our friend informed us. And that’s how I learned what Black Friday was, a few years before most of the UK had heard the term.

I’d like to sample Thanksgiving over there again, one year and I’d recommend it to anyone. It is tempting to make a big deal of the day and go out/do something to mark it, especially as you’re on holiday. But if you’re travelling independently, I don’t think you can beat just observing the day like most Americans do: at ‘home’, with those closest to you. 

Wherever we are, that’s still something for which we can be thankful.