WHY CAN'T WE BE MORE LIKE THE AMERICANS.
I love American Thanksgiving. I wish we had it here in Canada. Our Thanksgiving is in early October and it's on a Monday. Besides, it's not a "traditional" holiday like in the U.S. Canadians don't make a big deal out of Thanksgiving. It's not an exceptionally busy travel day here, whereas the U.S. holiday has everybody heading home for the holiday, which begins on Thursday with the big turkey dinner and all the football games, continues on Friday with the biggest shopping day of the year and the start of the "official" Christmas shopping season, and then the weekend is the time to hang out, loosen the belt on the pants and devour all the leftovers before heading back to normalcy. Of course, it's football that brings the families together more often than not. The Detroit Lions always play at home, around 12:30 pm. The Dallas Cowboys always host the afternoon game, around 4 p.m. This way, you can plan your big Thanksgiving Day feast accordingly. If you're a Detroit fan, you eat AFTER the Lions game. If you follow the Cowboys, you want to make sure you're finished BEFORE kickoff in Big "D". And if you're simply a football fan, you grab your plate, find a seat on the couch and hope like hell that the rest of the family understands. They will. It's Thanksgiving after all.
They're going to have close to 100 thousand football fans in Toronto this weekend, and the NFL doesn't even come to town for another few weeks. It's the Vanier Cup on Friday, followed by the Grey Cup on Sunday. Two Southern Ontario teams are involved. The McMaster Marauders are the defending Vanier Cup champs. The Toronto Argonauts are trying to win a Grey Cup at home for the first time in 60 years. Tickets are hard to come by, which is rare around these parts. In fact, thousands of Mac students lined up for hours the other day just to get a shot at reduced-rate tickets. The lineup was so big, several Mac players were "shocked" at the level of interest from the student body. Don't forget, everybody loves a winner, and many people will even pay money to watch them in action.
One of my directors at CHCH, Tansy Ko, seemed surprised at the fact that race car driver and Go Daddy spokesperson Danica Patrick was divorcing her husband after 7 years of marriage. Patrick and her (ex) husband Paul Hospenthal became engaged on Thanksgiving Day 2004. As Tansy pointed out "Who knew Danica was even married?". It's true. I'm sure gearheads all over the world knew that Patrick had a husband, because they always showed a shot of him on TV during her races. But for those of us who don't watch racing every week, Danica Patrick appeared to be a "sex kitten" who appeared in those Go Daddy ads to be a single woman. Kind of like the Bachelorette on the NASCAR circuit. Oh well, now that she's divorced, she's DEFINITELY available.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. That includes Gary Bettman, Donald Fehr and all those hockey-loving fans south of the border who now list football as their favourite sport. For the time being, anyway.
people will get offended .. we can't even write Merry Christmas across the mountain brow .. something we have done for decades .. we need to be sensitive to others feels Mark
ReplyDeleteHappy thanksgiving to all Americans besides Gary Bettman.
ReplyDeleteMark, my friend and College Compadre from 1976, I know you're a sports guy first and this is all in good fun, but I'm a little dissapointed in your non-patriotic turn. (-: The whole thing about about Canadian Thanksgiving, (2nd Monday in October) has everything to do with NOT being like U.S. Thanksgiving (3rd Thursday in November) and I'll take (our) Canadian Thanksgiving hands down, everytime. Canadian Thanksgiving, as we must remind, year after year, has nothing to do with Pilgrims (there were none in Canada) and breaking bread with the Indians (myth generally considered to be a light white-wash to gloss over the truth of mass genocide) and it certainly has nothing to do with a Macy's Parade or Football or 50% off at Target or getting up at 5am to line up outside stores to kick off a staged, frenzied early start to a Christmas shopping season. Canadian Thanksgiving was and remains a relatively quiet, unchanged and respected historic tradition of taking time to respect and be thankful for another good growing season and the ability, at the end of the final harvest, to be able to store away enough food so that familes could surive (quite literally) the harsh winter ahead and still be alive to plant a new crop in the spring. That's it. That's all. Love our U.S. neighbours. Wish them the best of Holidays, but I believe most Canadians would prefer that our Thanksgiving tradition not be misunderstood, confused and lumped in with "the show" south of the border.
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