Daughter's "fiddling" disrupts Thanksgiving plans

As I'm sure you know, it's Thanksgiving next week. Despite the fact it's not a holiday in Ireland, my family always celebrates. We usually try to have the big feast on the actual day, but there have been times in the past when we've had to do as other Americans here do and move the festivities to Saturday. Unfortunately, this year neither is possible.

This year we will have to have our Thanksgiving Day this coming Wednesday, which means I'll be eating a leftover turkey sandwich for lunch on Thursday before you've even finished watching the big parade on Broadway.

Why do we have to move our holiday? My daughter is in the school musical this year – Fiddler on the Roof – and her school inconsiderately scheduled the show to run for four days starting next Thursday.

Nothing I could do. It's not a holiday here and I can't very well expect the school to reorder its schedule to suit the one girl whose father is from America. {My wife advised me that going down to the school and announcing in my loudest voice that "This is AMERICA you're snubbing!" probably wouldn't make any difference.}

So the big dinner's got to be Wednesday. That's just it with Thanksgiving in Ireland. You have to be flexible. You never know what might interfere with the celebration. I just never expected the problem with my Thanksgiving to be a family of Russian Jews.