Importing… Yankee culture

So once again, your Eyewitness raises his hands to the heavens and asks, “When will it end, Lord??” He’s reacting to all the ads and notices of restaurants inviting Guyanese to enjoy their “Thanksgiving” dinners!! Yep!! You heard that right – Thanksgiving in Guyana!! America’s inexorable spread of its culture across the world has earned the sobriquet “McDonaldisation”. Courtesy, of course, of those ubiquitous Golden Arches that have now served more than 15 billion burgers – double the population of the world! Excepting Guyana! We just got a Wendy’s, but still no McDonalds!!
Now, you’d have thought Thanksgiving would be pretty tough to export. After all, it’s tied to a specific event in American history: the landing of their “Puritan Fathers” at Plymouth Rock, in what is now Massachusetts. They were what we’d call nowadays “Christian religious fundamentalists” fleeing a European backlash. They’d run into the “Indigenous People” – who they dubbed “Red Indians – and who generously offered them their native food – pumpkin, wild turkey, etc. This didn’t deter them from violently displacing the natives from their land – and even eventually exterminating them. But they started celebrating the occasion of their arrival as THANKSGIVING – feasting on the same food items the long-gone Indigenous Peoples had shared with them!! And here we are in Guyana now celebrating “Thanksgiving”?!
Oh… the irony!! Now, there’s nothing wrong with giving thanks, but your Eyewitness’ point is this – can’t we do it in a way that comes out of OUR culture? Since 1970, our Governments have been trying to convince us that we’re doing this by celebrating Republic Day with Mashramani!! What does this tell us about the success of our effort at “nation building” when after 50 years we so willingly accept instead this quintessential “American” celebration? We might as well go along with those loonies who’re clamouring for us to become the 51st American state, shouldn’t we?
What makes the adoption of Thanksgiving even more cringeworthy is that it’s so contemptuous of the feelings of our own Indigenous brothers and sisters. The Americans have done a good job of hiding the origins of Thanksgiving, but shouldn’t we be a bit more sensitive? What’s especially egregious is the way the “woke” crowd in Georgetown has latched on to this latest import. What next? Raising Jim Crow flags in the National Park?
C’mon, folks. We know in the grand scheme of things in the world at large, we mightn’t matter much. But with our oil about to hit 1 million barrels of oil per day, shouldn’t we start showing at long last that we’re capable of not being blown over by even the slightest breeze that blows from the north?

…heroes
Your Eyewitness was touched by all the heartfelt tributes offered at the passing of the sixties and seventies Bollywood star – Dharmendra. He was eighty-nine – well past the aspirational three-score-and-ten – so one could say he lived a full life, chronologically!! But there was another “fullness” that he enjoyed – but which for some reason wasn’t highlighted in our local press!! That he enjoyed TWO WIVES and lived with them in houses opposite each other – with his children from each!!
Your Eyewitness wondered whether this was what earned him the moniker “He Man” of the Indian screen!! Now your Eyewitness knows that in India, Muslims are governed in this matter by the personal law of the Sharia – which permits multiple wives. But Dharmendra was no Muslim!! So how’d he get away with bigamy?? It seems he “married” the second wife, Hema Malini – as big a star as he was!! – in a stage play!! And she was willing to go along!!
As the “outside” woman!!

…a holiday scheduling
If we wanna import another Yankee custom, our powers-that-be should consider their wonderful innovation in scheduling Thanksgiving. It’s always the LAST THURSDAY in November. Most employers give off the Friday – so they’ve made their most important contribution to mankind in the industrial age – the FOUR-DAY WEEKEND!!