Euro-Giving
Deep thot, Vanguard of the Commentariat:
I sort of like the way that one day a year turkey is the symbol of excess capitalist gluttony by red state morons whose forebears oppressed Indians, but the rest of the year it is the low fat diet smart choice at toney deli’s across the nation.
The most American holiday of the year is coming up. Thanksgiving. A touching event unlike any other I know of, just a meal and simple thankfulness for the good things in life. Wrapped up in the oppressive lie that is American history, of course. I was just discussing some of our quaint customs in an email exchange with my Dutch pal Michael van der Galien. He’s in an American Studies program in Rotterdam or Amsterdam or some other dam place,* so I suggested he get a bunch of his clog-wearing dike-plugging buddies to stage a real American Thanksgiving. Sort of like World War II GI re-enacting or cowboy dressup, both popular among the Euros. Â
Because, you know, even though they like to give us a hard time, they actually love us and want to be like us. So here’s the deal.Â
Everyone has to dress like an American .. oversized football jerseys or tank-tops with baggy shorts and Nikes or Velcro sandals. High school football hero crewcut or blow-dired 1970a disco hair. Chinos and polo shirts and a new boy’s regular if you want to be more formal. Or wear your oversized baseball hat sideways and pants half off your ass. Oversized is pretty much the key to everything, unless you’re going the American nerd route, in which can everything must be symbolically too tight. Everyone’s going to need an American name. Earl’s the best one. Just call everyone Earl. Everyone has to act like an American … kind of clumsy and stupid, knocking things over … talk like an American … loud braying, with a lot of bragging and guffawing … use American table manners … pig-with-a-stick, mouth-open-while-chewing preferred. Ostentatious grace invoking the name of Jesus required. Some kind of family fight. I’d suggest a contentious abortion debate over dinner ending with gunplay.Â
Aboriginal American Thanksgiving cuisine mandatory. I’d recommend some of the Midwestern variants, circa 1964. Mashed sweet potatoes with marshmellow topping, creative Jello sculptures. The can-shaped cranberries. Canned green beans, canned Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup with canned fried onion rings casserole. Yum! Seeing as Michael’s in Holland, I’d recommend the hash stuffing, Haight-Ashbury circa 1968. Rope in some of the other Eurobloggers. I bet Froggy would be up for it. He loves America. Barcepundit, Norm. Euros with an appreciation of America’s finer points. Maybe get that totty-obsessed potato-digging reprobate Theo on a cross-channel ferry. And videotape. Don’t forget the videotape. Somebody has to play the annoying uncle with the vidcam.
* Bartender! One Rijksuniversiteit Groningen over here! … Brit with a strange accent indeed! Brit with a strange accent, better dentistry and personal hygience unhindered either by monarchy or socialism, maybe. MVDG reports he is attending to a TG staged by the American Studies program. I hope Michael and his fellow students find the suggestions above helpful, but while I appreciate the irony — especially in the Netherlands, purveyors of slaveflesh to the Americas for centuries, oppressors of Indonesians, Caribbean colonists to the present day – I’d strongly advise against any demonstrations in black face or red face. Nothing but trouble lies down that route, even if you are in Europe, where displays of racism are more permissible than they are in the United States.  Â
Now that I think of it, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen should bring me over as a visiting prof. I could teach them a lot about America. Ugly American 101. Indulge me for a moment in some shameless jingoism, as the American son of immigrants, born here, raised in five different countries, now living 10 miles down the road from where it started. Because America is the greatest country on Earth. History’s terrible crucible, into which much European hatred and violence and avarice and culture and cockamamie ideas and dreams were poured, with considerable African, Indian and Asian influences, out of which was forged something the like of which has been unseen before or since. Imitation encouraged!
Our national anthem is a tale of great strife, in the second of our two wars to win freedom from the old world, literally written within sight and sound of cannonfire by someone held captive by the enemy: ”O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleaming, whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
It is not possible to hear it without chills. But sometimes I think the greater song might be another anthem from another war, to win freedom within ourselves. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.”Â
Enough old-school flagwaving, though if you have seen American soldiers throw themselves into fire to win the liberty of strangers, seen the rockets’ red glare, and witnessed the trampling of the latest vintage and the fateful lightning, there is nothing musty about it.Â
You’ve got your de Tocqueville, I’m sure that’s already in the RG curriculum. Here’s something more contemporary. Reverse de Tocqueville. P.J. O’Rourke’s “Among the Euroweenies,” from “Holidays in Hell.” As O’Rourke so eloquently notes, America is bigger, and better. Our parking lots are bigger than some of your countries. We need them for our gas-guzzling boats of cars, with which we are changing the very climate of Earth! That’s how bad we are. We are blessed with open spaces, that give us room to think and breathe. We are born free, not wards of the state, despite the best efforts of some Euro-inspired parties. I think I’ll throw in that Steyn piece from the other day, modern de Tocqueville lite, because it’s best to hear it from appreciative foreigners.Â
OK, blah blah blah, you’ve heard it all before. Note to my Euro friends, it’s all in fun. We love you, like we love a doddering grandparent drooling on himself in the corner! And I know you love us, like a rebellious reprobate of a teenager who thinks he just invented everything. We all sit at the same table.
Welcome Surberistas, Pajamas, VDG Gazetters, etal. Pull up a chair. We’re ruminating on some political verbiage: Don’t tase the swift-boater, bro! Might want to wash that down with some Good Cop Bad Cop Koolaid. Don’t forget to Pak a war. No need to keep your voices down, these snoozing strollers aren’t waking up.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:09 pm on Sunday, November 18, 2007
23 Responses to “Euro-Giving”
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November 18th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Don’t forget: someone has to be Grandpa in the easy chair after dinner, asleep with his mouth open, and someone else has to be Crazy Aunt Edna playing matchmaker for the long-suffering great-nephews.
And there has to be a musical plush turkey that wiggles and plays “Turkey in the Straw” when a button is pushed.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Or maybe one of those wall-mounted singing fish. But that’s more of a Fourth of July thing.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Oh, yeah, and they need six kids under the age of ten, screaming through the house, knocking over lamps, getting into fights, and bursting into tears. That one might be hard for the Euros to come up with, though.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Oh, and someone has to play the still single, 20something guy who’s still consigned to the kiddie table. He should have his girl friend there too. She would be at the grown ups table with the annoying uncle flirting with her.
There also needs to be 6 or more older ladies there all wandering in and out of the kitchen and commenting on how everything the cook is doing is just wrong wrong wrong.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Nice idea. The English could organise it, the French supply the wine, the Italians the Food, and the Germans could invade Poland!!
November 19th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Don’t forget to find a satellite station that shows every college football game being played, else the men won’t have anything to do but get underfoot.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:39 am
[...] 19, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën Jules has quite a good idea: “I was just discussing some of our quaint customs in an email exchange with my Dutch pal [...]
November 19th, 2007 at 8:20 am
It’s not Thanksgiving if at least one traditional dish hasn’t been ruined by the use of some processed-food monstrosity recipe gotten from one of the Food network’s bimbos like Rachel Ray or Sandra “Semi-Ho” Lee.
November 19th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Jules, you forgot the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys. No Thanksgiving is complete without the NFL!
November 19th, 2007 at 9:47 am
[...] has the perfect recipe for Europeans who want an American Thanksgiving. He left off the turducken, but it is a nice send-up, [...]
November 19th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Nice idea. The English could organise it, The English could organize it the French supply the wine, the Italians the Food, and the Germans could invade Poland!!
God, have to love the Theo Sparkian line of thought….
Please allow me to editorialize:
“The English could organise it”. Yes, the Churchillian way, with bulldog tenacity.
“the French supply the wine”. Since Sarkozy, it is the first time one could spell wine, without the H. I think.
“the Italians the Food”. Absolutely, IF one could get my countrymen to agree on the bill of fare (lotsa’ luck).
“the Germans could invade Poland!!” On this one, I’m of the belief that this century, it would be Poland invading Germany and successfully.
If I may take the liberty and add…Spain could pull their troops from, al-Andalus.
A wonderful fest it shall be. Thank you, Theo.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Oh Oh…ITALIC ATTACK
November 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am
OH SHIT!..Geez, nice seeing you guys, have to lay low for a while.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Phewwwwwwwwwwwww.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Gosh, I like the mashed yams with the marshmallows added the last 10 minutes.
(a can of crushed pineapple, butter, pepper & salt jazz it up)
and the string beans aren’t canned, but it’s hard to beat those disgusting onion rings mixed up with cream of mushroom soup.
(recipe tips R Us)
Maybe Euros could appreciateTG “tradition” at our house in the olden daze, when my mom and aunt would get slightly sloshed while preparing the meal !
November 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Web Reconnaissance for 11/19/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…
November 19th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
The people who get me are the Thanksgiving killjoys who decide to lord a gigantic guilt trip over not eating turkey. Pardon me, but if there’s one day I plan on eating a bird that isn’t breaded and fried, slathered with tomato sauce, or dipped in sauces that range from insulin-shock inducing sweet to something rancid that I wouldn’t feed to a rat, any crunchy-granola overeducated twit trying to sell me on the virtues of militant veganism will be stuffed into a trash barrel and wedgied until they beg for mercy.
For those vegetarians out there who serve turkey AND tofurkey and don’t lord their anal-retentive beliefs on animals over others - please forgive me. The previous rant was not for you. (However, I’ll take an additional slice of that organic apple pie with raisins and walnuts. And a slice of that bread with the caraway seeds - that stuff is heaven sent.)
November 19th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Oops…must watch my editing while ranting.
who decide to lord a gigantic guilt trip over eating turkey
November 19th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
It’s part of our tradition to cap on our traditions, but I do have a lot of good memories of Thanks Givings past.
Grandma was a hella good cook. The old school type country cook. We also raised a fair lot of our own food, both animal and veggie.
Today, the serious cookery would have started. Herb bread would be baked to set aside for making stuffing. A turkey would have been slaughtered, plucked and processed for steaming in broth and herbs. Tomorrow, it would be deboned and prepped for a huge pot of turkey dumpling soup.
Tomorrow would also be the start of the serious pie, cobbler and cake baking.
The morning of the big feast, another turkey would be slaughtered and prepped for roasting, bread would be baking, all the usual side dishes would be under construction. All activity would center on the kitchen and its needs. Even the kids would be put to work with jars of cream to be shaken into fresh butter.
On the day before the feast, we’d go to church for a huge pot luck. All the ladies would have made their best dishes to share with the congregation. Lots of great food and fellowship.
On feast day, there might be as many as 20 or 30 people over. Family, friends, neighbors, etc. All feasting and enjoying each others company.
And the best part was… the day after. That was the official beginning of Grandma’s home made candy making season. We’d feast on home made candies, sweets, cookies, cakes, fudge and divinity made fresh every day until New Years Eve.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Cool story, Grimmy, thanks!
I have very fond memories as well. Thanksgiving was always at my grandmother’s house. She brought out her wedding china, silver flatware, and damask tablecloth. A relish tray featured Grampa’s home grown carrots (cut into thin carrot sticks) and turnips (which only he ate but I admired for their lavender color), her bread-and-butter pickles, olives that we were allowed to eat by putting them first on our finger tips, and pickled beets that he grew and she pickled (my favorite; as a kid I could hardly believe there was a magenta food). There was sparkling wine (we would have called it champagne; I’m sure it wasn’t) and Grampa would sneak us some. Riced potatoes, delicious turkey and gravy, green beans her way (strange concoction of bacon and vinegar), homemade apple, pumpkin, and mince pies.
Afterward we would play The Thanksgiving Game, which my dad invented long before we were born when he and his friends were at Gram’s house (his mom). You take the glass globe from her 1920s art deco lamp; it’s almost a sphere, but with one flat side. Two people sit on opposite ends of the room, each with a small piece of paper in front of them. You roll the globe across the carpet and try to get it to stop on top of the other person’s small piece of paper. As I recall it took so long to achieve the objective that the game always ended at 1-0.
It was years and years before I realized that many people watch football on Thanksgiving.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
“it would be Poland invading Germany”
Hmmm, how do you say “lebensraum” in Polish?
I can see it now: behind the Polish army, plowing under the spaetzel crops and planting pierogi bushes. /BBC spaghetti harvest hoax
November 20th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I sort of like the way that one day a year turkey is the symbol of excess capitalist gluttony by red state morons whose forebears oppressed Indians, but the rest of the year it is the low fat diet smart choice at toney deli’s across the nation.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:33 am
Thanks for the shout out JC, but I have to attribute that “thot” to a much deeper thinker than myself. Not sure, but I think I first heard that from Steyn quite a few years ago.