It doesn’t have to be written out explicitly to realize that holidays work differently here. What one learns to expect at home is not regarded as the norm here.

At around Halloween, my one friend from England asked me a handful of times, “When is Halloween?” I saw a variety of costumes and people dressing up here, but it was nothing in comparison to what I see at home every year.

But in this case of cultural differences and knowing what to expect, Halloween was only a minor point. What caught us all by surprise is that very shortly after Halloween, Christmas decorations began going up in stores and on streets. We wouldn’t even be valid in our choruses of, “But it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet!” because here, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated.

Similar to the Halloween question, I’d been asked many times leading up to Thanksgiving by British flatmates and acquaintances why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Because it’s such a part of life now, I hadn’t even thought about the “real” answer to that in quite awhile and had to conjure up the elementary school teachings of why Thanksgiving came into being. Even when I’d finished explaining the reasons why, I’d be greeted with blank stares. They didn’t quite seem to grasp anything other than the fact that mass quantities of food were involved, and even then they were very confused by the concept of pumpkin pie.

For me, Thanksgiving itself didn’t feel like a holiday. I still had class, my friends still had class and dinner was whatever I had sitting unused in my fridge. While family and friends were celebrating in the traditional sense at home, it was just another day.

One of the most fun experiences with the Dickinson Humanities program here, though, was our Thanksgiving the Saturday following actual Thanksgiving. Everyone who was in Norwich at that time came over to our professor’s house and we celebrated. It was a potluck, so while some of us, like me, went over a day early to bake pies with his wife, others brought food they’d made in their flats beforehand.

Even though it wasn’t Thanksgiving at home and might not have had the same foods as Thanksgiving in the cafeteria at school, it was a wonderful celebration. Coming together in our large group for events like these is an absolutely wonderful part of this program. After spending three weeks as a huge group in London, we were ready to get away from each other at the university. Now, since we’ve spent months relatively apart from one another, gatherings like these are extra special.

And now that actual-Thanksgiving and program-Thanksgiving are officially over, I can begin to enjoy the Christmas lights and decorations that surround me and look forward to being home to celebrate that holiday in the normal manner.