Has Anyone Here Renamed the Christmas Tree the Merry Tree?

One year when my wife had just recently given birth, I was in charge of
Thanksgiving dinner. Damn near turned into Bonfire Night

I happen to still like ceremonies, some of the time. Probably I use the word differently than others. Once a child with great reverence for my then religious beliefs, I now like at least the idea of the celebrations of those of many beliefs, indeed including a group having a jolly dinner with people who may differ with each other on all that... including celebration in a secular sense, a commonality of interest in how the individuals are doing, sometimes including enjoyment about nature's season.

I know zip about druids, but I might have liked them. I do, though, have interest in the elder Pliny who, I gather, described them; maybe I'll read more and learn sumpin'.

At this point I despise Christmas music in stores, but I still might like going to Christmas midnight mass at St. Nick's, just as I liked walking into Santa Maria della Minerva at a high mass one morning in Rome, with the organ going hell bent for election. I still appreciate joy.

Re christmas trees: my quandary is whether to capitalize the c. I capitalize less and less as the years pass since I was in high school. Sometimes I don't capitalize countries either. Take that! you capitalizers.

Unless it's followed by Andrew.

Turkeys, bless their hearts, are tough birds, hard to cook well, so, rarely done just right, so often dry. It can be done on occasion. I think it would be nice not to have a zillion turkeys suffer the whole fattening for the celebration thing. I'm not against eating fowl, but there's a lot of, uh, massacre involved with the celebratory dinner.

My cousins did raise two turkeys one year. One died early from ingesting a black widow spider, and the other turned out to be delicious. That doesn't bother me so much, as they were certainly free ranging for quite a while.

Apparently, I need to explain what I posted from half a dozen different links, some American some British.

These quotes from the links show that it still isn't a British celebration, that companies/vendors in Britain are starting to cater to the increasing number of Americans there who are wishing to celebrate their American holiday. They don't detail Brits celebrating, they detail how some Brits are accommodating American friends and how some British businesses are targeting and profiting from Americans in Britain wanting to celebrate the American holiday.

These quotes also describe the British equivalent of the Harvest Celebration and the tradition of bringing a can of food to school or church for the needy. Several point out that it isn't any comparison, one being an elaborate family festival and one being mostly a functionary collection of cans.

In other words, yes, there is a Harvest Celebration in Britain. Yes, there are Americans in Britain celebrating the American Thanksgiving holiday there. No, there isn't much resemblance of the two. No, Thanksgiving isn't being celebrated by Brits in Britain as a British holiday. It is being celebrated by Americans in Britain as an American holiday while in Britain. Yes, it is providing another advertising gimmick for your businesses.

Has anyone mentioned the Wiccan/Pagan festival of Yule? It is also known as the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. The date varies from December 20 to December 23 depending on the year in the Gregorian calendar. Such things as wassail and Yule logs are remnants of this.

How is the fact that American expats celebrate Thanksgiving over here news? They've always done that. It would only be newsworthy if they were stopped from doing it. And how is the fact that some restaurants decide to cash in on the expat community proof that we're starting to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Engineer's post, (which set this debate off) was that pictures of pilgrims were appearing in British supermarkets in the run up to Thanksgiving. They aren't, either Contrex, Lordy or myself would have noticed if it had.

Last year my daughter was in China, she celebrated Christmas, and some restaurants did offer a Christmas dinner, (of sorts.) It doesn't change the fact that for the ordinary Chinese, December 25th was just another working day.

I have a bit difficulties in believing that the Scandinavian pagans really celebrated solstice between December 20-23.
They had no clocks or calenders - it was often too dark to notice that there was one minute difference from one day to the other.
They celebrated midwinter and midsummer only having two seasons.
Midwinter was celebrated by visiting friends and relatives and eating and drinking. This was done in the middle of winter and not on a certain day.
That must have come much later when months, days and dates had come to use.
Also these midwinter feasts dependent on how the harvest had been.
Bad harvest - no parties
Good harvest - good parties.
The time of the year was called jul. Where the word comes from noone really knows and its meaning is very weak. Jul probably streched over a much longer time than now adays. It might even have meant a great part of the winter. Or it meant feast. It is all guesswork.

I once read an account by a British university lecturer of his time in Ghana. The first Christmas he was there, his Ghanaian academic colleagues arranged a "traditional Christmas dinner" to stop him feeling homesick. At some expense they flew in frozen sprouts, parsnips, mince pies, Christmas pudding etc, from Britain. The meat was not turkey, something else, he wasn't sure, but he didn't ask out of politeness and British reserve. He manfully managed to eat a great deal of everything (it seemed to be expected, everyone was anxiously watching him). At the end after pulling crackers he said to the guy who organised it "You have clearly gone to a lot of trouble." and the reply was "The hardest part was catching the dog".

A traditional Christmas, 1909, in Cameroon

A wonderful Christmas story!
Thank you, contrex

I have a feeling it might be a yuletide dog story, but if so, it's a good one. I have a friend who is an old West Africa hand who said that it is quite plausible, he also said it would fit with the Ghanaian sense of humour if they were pretending it was dog meat.

Are you having trouble comprehending what I wrote? Why are you repeating exactly what I said as argument against what I said? Do you have a problem with my agreement with your position?

What the hell gives?

You initially posted a load of links and videos in support of Engineer's claim about us celebrating Thanksgiving. Your next post about ex pats and restaurateurs celebrating it, seemed to imply they were acting as a Trojan horse for the Thanksgivingation of Britain.

I'm sorry if that's not what you intended.

Copy-pasted more like. I see you got voted down to zero so I gave you a +1. Lest anybody be under any misapprehension, most British people are not gagging to suck Uncle Sam's dick, nor to felch his arse, tourist propaganda notwithstanding.