On holidays

In America, the big eating holiday is Thanksgiving, at the end of November. Thanksgiving is a great holiday- probably the best holiday in America, if you ask me. (In case You've always wondered, it commemorates the first harvest feast at which the pilgrims sat down with the Indians to thank them for all their help and tell them, 'Oh, and by the way, we've decided we want the whole country') It is a great holiday because you don't have to give gifts or send cards or do anything but eat until you begin to look like a balloon that has been left on a helium machine too long.

The trouble is that it comes less than a month before Christmas. So when on 25 December Mom brings out another turkey, you don't go, 'Turkey! YIPEEE!' but rather, 'Ah, turkey again is it, Mother?' Under such an arrangement Christmas dinner is bound to come as an anticlimax.

Notes from a big country, Bill Bryson