This week is the busiest travel period of the year in the United States, as Americans of all stripes, colours and creeds scurry home for a long weekend of rapacious eating, enduring tedious relatives, watching (American) football, and, oh, rapacious eating.

The President will pardon a turkey on the White House lawn. And the entire population will be fed off leftover stuffing and mashed potatoes for weeks to come.

What sort of bizarre cultural ritual is this, you wonder? Why it's Thanksgiving! How else would one celebrate the settlement of persecuted religious fundamentalists in a hostile land than by stuffing oneself silly and cheering on grown men running around in lycra and hitting each other?

I have never been fond of Thanksgiving. I'm a vegetarian, so the traditional turkey and gravy meal never appealed to me. And coming face-to-face with a hulking dead bird carcass on my dining room table doesn't help. Recently, however, my mother and I have established a truce. She buys a free-range turkey from the butcher so that I know, or can tell myself, that it led a good life before it went into our oven. I shrug off my guilt and serve myself extra helpings of the garlic mashed potatoes.

For another, I have an exceedingly low threshold for mundane family chit-chat. Yes, I realize I haven't seen Aunt Tillie in three years but, really, I am less than interested in how her pet poodle caught the flu. And I don't even bother with Grandpa any more. He is 91 and can't hear a thing, even with his hearing aid at full blast. Instead of shouting full bore across the table trying to sustain a conversation, I leave him to his red wine and meat. I suspect we're both happier that way. So, yes, my Thanksgiving memories are less than blissful. And yet, I do genuinely find myself wishing I was home to take part in the holiday, Aunt Tillie and all. Instead, I will partake in a celebration of sorts here in Oxford, with my college Master hosting all the American graduate students for dinner at his home. Last year the meal was lovely, his lodgings resplendent, but something about the holiday had gotten lost in translation.

There was no spilling of wine on the white carpet, no hub-bub in the kitchen as the dog made off with the stuffing, no inadvertent belching at the dinner table, no deaf relatives. It was way too civilised.

I'm not sure if it is simply that the English just don't really comprehend the big-meal, big-family chaos that is Thanksgiving, or if it is something about the all-encompassing gluttony of the holiday that repels them. You do have your own incomprehensible sorts of cultural events - Guy Fawkes springs to mind - but I couldn't come upon a similar holiday dedicated to honouring the heritage of your great country.

Maybe you could start something up . . . William the Conqueror Day, perhaps? Or perhaps I should just accept that there is something uniquely American about the whole concept, something about the celebration of abundance and plentitude that accompanies our "bigger is better" mentality. At least, for this one day, though, Americans are taking time out to express gratitude for nature and fortune's largess.