i have essentially no childhood memories attached to this celebration. i usually spent it in the basement, avoiding family members that i didn't like.

it was the holiday that i never really understood. like, i may have tried to avoid people at the spring solstice, too, but at least i understood easter. what is thanksgiving, exactly? i never really got a straight answer until i looked into the history, in my 20s. maybe it's because i can't tie it to anything solar; maybe that's why it doesn't really make sense.

if you check my 2016 blog, i actually made it all the way to the post office before i even realized what day it was. i just pay absolutely no attention to this.

it could be partly because i really don't have any north american ancestors from that era, except maybe on my mom's dad side, which i don't know well. i've met my maternal grandfather something like five times in my whole life. my maternal grandmother is second generation, from norway, on her mom's side; i guess her father's parents were irish, but she never talked about them much, and i don't think she identified much with them. either way, we're still talking catholics, and they probably don't go further than the potato "famine" (that is, the irish genocide).

my dad's side is a mix, but all catholic and jewish, and maybe native and african. there's potentially some old stock quebecois in there, but there's nothing protestant.

so, don't be surprised if i do spend part of thanksgiving in the states, and don't expect me to really even notice it, if i do. this is something that i just don't care about.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this