Happy Thanksgiving!

We're now back in the US, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. More on that later; but first, the story of last weekend.

Having arrived back in the US on Friday, Helen did her first concert with the Bay Choral Guild, as I mentioned last week. Saturday involved a repeat of the same concert in San Francisco (at the rather splendid St Gregory of Nyssa church, with its colourful mural of the Dancing Saints), which I went along to. This was a very different experience to going to see Vivace Chorus at Guildford Cathedral: firstly, Bay Choral Guild is what you'd describe as a chamber choir of about 40 voices, not the massed ranks of 100+ you'd see in Guildford. Secondly, the audiences for amateur choirs are drawn from friends and relations, so naturally the audience was smaller (I think we outnumbered the choir, but if so it wasn't by many). And finally, this is the US, so combined with the smaller choir and audience, the general atmosphere was much less formal and distinctly more chatty.

Bay Choral Guild is a pretty good amateur choir, though; over an hour of a capella performance, with a fairly small choir, means everyone needs to be on their game. Vivace is good too, but the average standard here is better than back at home. Say it quietly!

Today, of course, is Thanksgiving. The whole country has been getting excited about this for most of the week, with the office getting emptier and emptier (to the point where yesterday the visitors outnumbered the inmates), and our local baristas getting in on the act:

In the morning we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade on TV, live from New York City, featuring a massive inflatable Snoopy and of course, a similar turkey. Helen got excited enough about this to take some pictures and videos of the TV:

For lunch, we elected to go out to a fairly nice local restaurant, where we enjoyed the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes and french beans:

Some of our party were even brave enough to try out the pumpkin pie. Well, at least it looked nice:

After Thanksgiving lunch it's traditional to watch football on the telly, which we're trying to do, with very little understanding of what's going on. Generally speaking, the country shuts down on Thanksgiving in a way that it rarely does on any other holiday; most of the shops are shut, although we did see quite a few folks out and about. It feels a little bit like Christmas Day back in the UK, replete with Black Friday coming tomorrow, analogous to those Boxing Day sales.

Lunch was lovely, and overall the impression I get is that US focus on things being innocent fun is alive and well in Thanksgiving too. As we were out walking today, plenty of strangers wished us Happy Thanksgiving, and we've had a couple of invites to different gatherings of locals (but obviously, we're English, so avoid social contact wherever possible). It's not entirely clear that Happy Thanksgiving means anything specific - I've seen nothing which points to the origins of Thanksgiving, and doing the research shows that the history is much less clear than you might think - but a chance to take a break and reflect is welcome and timely. Now to Black Friday and Cyber Monday!