The Only Reasonable Response to Thanksgiving in Europe: Ditch It

The State Department estimates that there are between three and six million Americans living overseas – over a hundred thousand in Germany, another hundred thousand, give or take, in England, another hundred thousand in France, and very nearly that number in Australia. Mexico tops the list, with 700,000-plus Americans registered. Given that, it is the season of the big bird. However dry and stringy the fowl you usually encounter, however flat the dressing, however saccharine the canned cranberries, and not least, however disheartening the college football results, the American living abroad tends to miss the annual trudge through the hysterical mess that is our long Thanksgiving weekend. There are many intense ways of coping and hoping to recreate the day 4000 miles from the native shore. Some people actually try to find the stuff and cook it, a quixotic enterprise, at best.  You exit the oddly-cobbled American meal, overstuffed as usual, only to find yourself in...Rome, for God's sake, on a working Thursday night, your nationality arguably confirmed but entirely skewed, more or less at sea as the entire town rushes you by.