Glad Notes: Which Bunny Booster?

Welcome to Glad Notes, where I'll ponder cultural quirks from the New World (namely North America) and the Old World (Europe, mostly the UK). Those strange little facts that really bring no meaning to your day, but maybe you'll be glad you discovered something new.

As a Brit living with an American husband, I stumble across these things almost every day - usually in the midst of, or because of, some light-hearted marital dispute. The plus side of our cultural misunderstandings is learning useless new nuggets of information… Which I can share with you here.

Which Bunny Booster?

It's that time of year when TV commercials gain seasonal relevance. In the UK it's perfume adverts and supermarkets, and in the USA it's anything which could possibly have a vague link to Christmas - such as batteries for all those Christmas lights and annoying kids' toys.

Mark and I once watched a typical UK commercial for Duracell batteries, with pink bunny and all. Mark found it far more entertaining than anyone should find a battery advert.

Mark: Ha ha ha! Don't you get it? It's funny because they're making a play on the Energizer bunny.

Me: The what? That's the Duracell bunny. It's a thing.

Mark: No, it's the Energizer bunny, Duracell are copying them.

Me: Uh, it's always been the Duracell bunny. Energizer doesn't even have a bunny.

Mark: You're wrong.

Turns out we were both wrong. 

Energizer does have a bunny. 
But Duracell didn't copy it, Energizer did. 
And you might never see the Duracell bunny in the USA.

Duracell started the rabbit battery thing in 1973.

Energizer did a blatant tongue-firmly-in-cheek copy in 1989.

The edgy Energizer bunny gained far more traction in the USA than the cutesy Duracell one. It didn't initially work out well though. Duracell outsold Energizer as people associated "pink bunny" with "Duracell batteries". Oops.

That was until Duracell's trademark expired in the USA, and Energizer snapped up the bunny booster trademark. The Duracell bunny was chased out of North America and went into hiding in the Old World.

So this is why the phrase "Duracell bunny" is ingrained into my cultural subconscious to mean something that just keeps on going, but for Mark and other Americans it's the phrase "Energizer bunny". Mark insists the Energizer bunny is much better, but the traditional cuddly qualities of the Duracell counterpart are much more appealing to me. I detect a bit of cultural bias towards our own bunnies, as it were!

I think that demonstrates in part how pervasive cutesy commercial icons can become. We grow up with them, and they become part of our cultural identity.

Over the past few years the UK has been dominated by Russian meerkat insurance peddlers. They've become so popular that they sell plush toys, they sponsor one of the UK's highest rated prime time shows, and a Scottish aquarium proudly advertises a mob of meerkats amongst their stingray and starfish.

I thought I'd have a hard time explaining to my mother-in-law why Russian meerkats sell car insurance. But she instantly fell in love with them, proclaiming her desire for a meerkat plush.  The site doesn't operate in the USA though, which is a missed opportunity.

I realized there was no explanation needed. Then the same thing happened to me in Macy's at Thanksgiving. My mum and I saw a rather charming pyramid of plush ducks that yelled like an angry Philadelphian when squeezed. We had no clue what they were, so we bought two.

On the train back a woman asked if she could squeeze our Aflac ducks. We happily obliged and she thanked me graciously as the duck yelled AFLAAAC.

Later during the Thanksgiving parade we saw the same duck trundling above the streets of New York. A commercial followed, explaining the good work that Aflac does. Later again I saw this bizarre commercial, where the Aflac Duck raps in a battle against a pigeon.

It turns out the Aflac Duck is a seasonal thing. I didn't know. I didn't need to know. I already loved it.

We love our commercial cultural icons. It's a universal matter of forming a strange cultural identity. Just ask the Japanese, who seem to have an anthropomorphic character for everything.

AFLAAAAAAC.

The Thanksgiving/Christmas limbo

Dear Americans,

It's too soon.

I don't care that Thanksgiving is over. 

I don't care that the nights are long and the lawn is frozen come morning.

I don't care if your houses are bare of decor. I don't care if they feel dark and sullen after the autumnal glow and ombre harvest shades.

I don't care if Santa Claus arrived at the end of the parade. 

It is still November. You still have turkey remnants lingering in your fridge. You have an extra week before Advent. You do not need to decorate for Chri-

Oh, who am I kidding? Never mind.  As you were.

There is no Thanksgiving/Christmas limbo. 

America's answer to Boxing Day is to make it bigger, brasher, and more menacing. But by the end of Black Friday the pumpkins, leaves, and corn were gone from every house.

Wreathes appeared on doors, making houses look like perfect little lilliput models. Strung up lights came on as if from nowhere. Reindeers, santas and nativity scenes popped up in front yards.

And they are multiplying.

One guy in the neighborhood has multiple sheds full of giant Christmas lights and lawn decorations. Over the past week more and more has appeared in his garden display.

But it as yet unlit, unlike the rest of the locale. When this boondock display lights up it'll feel like we have our own hyperlocal Blackpool Illuminations, to use a quirky British reference.

The 24 hour Walmart is playing Christmas songs (presumably 24 hours a day?).

Finding strings of white lights in store is getting harder and harder by the day.

Pumpkin shaped candy is out and bags of confectionery adorned with trees and Santas are in.

America, I am swimming here in festivity.

Christmas in Love Park, Philadelphia, and the Comcast building

Incidentally, today was also the start of the PA deer hunting season. This morning I saw a guy walking on his property wielding a gun … pointed up and towards his own house. Hunters, please stay safe and walk with your guns aimed at the ground.

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A British Girl's Guide to Thanksgiving

For my first ever thanksgiving, I was told to just sit down and enjoy myself. Soak in the experience.

This was not hard. Not at all.

The house decor had already transitioned from Halloween pumpkins to Harvest pumpkins…

The morning started with Mimosas, Monkey Bread and the Macy's parade.

To a Brit like me, a Mimosa sounds suspiciously like a Bucks Fizz: Sparkling wine and orange juice.

Show-off fact: A Mimosa is one part wine and one part orange juice. Bucks Fizz is one part wine and two parts orange juice.

Monkey Bread is a delicious cake of sugar and cinnamon dough balls to pick at.

The Macy's parade is another sparkling display of US bravado that feels just a little cheesy to British eyes, especially compared to the pomp and ceremony of our parades!

It's also a great opportunity for companies to secure good advertising. After each relevant float, the ad break contained corresponding commercials. Smart move.

The day has the usual holiday family frenetics full with amusing one-liners, especially when heard out of context:

I thought you would stuff the breasts.

I'm going to need a probe.

Apologize to her later when you're not naked.

And then the bird comes out.

festive turkey baster

 Show-off Fact: In the 1800s a turkey would have cost about $600 in real terms. Wild turkeys had been over-hunted and became quite rare during this time, so serving it was a real show-off.

As most British folks usually have turkey for Christmas, and I always certainly did, I wondered if it would be strange to have a huge turkey meal in a different kind of festivity.

Not at all. It's an entirely different kind of meal, preceded by grace and thanks. Thanks for long and prosperous marriages, for good grades, for health, and good food.

My husband gave thanks that we were finally able to enjoy our marriage together.

My mum, who flew over earlier this week, gave thanks for Thanksgiving as a good reason to come and visit.

I gave thanks that I've always had solid ground under my feet, and a stable roof over my head.

And then we tucked in.

Show-off Fact: Thanksgiving dinners were quite common in England during the Protestant Reformation. They were partly a protest against the showy festivals of the Catholic calendar - I wonder if the irony of this was lost on those who celebrated such a thanksgiving. They became a regular affair during November harvest festivals, and also surprisingly to celebrate Guy Fawke's night.

I wonder why, then, that Thanksgiving really hit it off after the settlers arrived in the New World, but lost prominence in the UK. In the USA it gained a new significance when Natives saved the settlers from the harsh American winters (and scurvy of course, by way of pumpkin pie). But what happened in the UK?

However, if you tell Americans that Thanksgiving was an English invention, they may not take too kindly to being informed their favorite holiday comes from those quirky Europeans with stiff upper lips and bad teeth ;)

Thanksgiving Week: Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

This week I'll be experiencing my first ever Thanksgiving.

Last month I became engrossed in the pumpkin culture prevalent in the USA. Not only are pumpkins for carving, but they are also for picking, chucking, flavoring beer, and also for flavoring other questionable consumer products.

And, of course, they are also for pie. As I already learned several years ago it's this week of the year that Americans really need their tins of pumpkin for pie.

Since I wrote about the history of pumpkin pie and pumpkin spices, I've been fascinated knowing that the basic recipe has barely changed in hundreds of years.  I was determined to find out how to make it like the Native Americans may have made for the settlers for the first American Thanksgiving.

As I said before, they filled their pumpkins with milk and spices. Was this the first pumpkin pie, or the first pumpkin spice latte?

I wanted to find out. Lo and behold, I found this recipe from Rural Spin! It's for pie in a pumpkin, so I had to try it!

The recipe itself is fairly simple:

And the result?

Erm, it was okaaay.

The pumpkin was baked wonderfully and was a treat to eat. The spices were familiar and sweet. A spoonful of pumpkin, spice and sweetness tasted pretty good.

But my 'pie' did not rise at all, not like the one on Rural Spin. I do have to confess I used a mixture of whole milk and half and half, not cream. And after a few spoonfuls it tasted sweet and cloying. I could understand why the colonialists weren't too keen on it and ended up with scurvy.

It was super fun to try though, and I would try it again to attempt to perfect the recipe. But for my first Thanksgiving here, it'll be pie in a crust for me!

It's my first ever Thanksgiving and I'm very excited about it! Tell me some of your traditions, and stuff I should try out!

CaliforNOA! First stage of visa journey over.

Almost five months to the date from our application we finally had our visa petition approved! That's great, because their time limit is five months, and it's Thanksgiving tomorrow.

From what I know, Thanksgiving doesn't involve presents (just pumpkin) but this is a pretty sweet gift nonetheless. It's almost as sweet as sweet potatoes and marshmallows, which I hear is a 'thing'. At any rate, I'll give thanks for bureaucratic processes with truthful timelines.

So what happens now? California sends all our papers to New Hampshire, and then they send us a bill for more money. Soon after that I can actually apply for the visa itself. There's still a lot to do, but we've just about reached the halfway mark.

I do believe they send actual, physical paper to the other side of the country, rather than doing the processing electronically. I must admit this does fascinate me a little bit. I've been reading The Pale King, an unfinished work by American author David Foster Wallace. I'm only a little way through and it's fairly heavy-going but the book is essentially about bureaucracy: It's about IRS agents and the paperwork they deal with, and the boredom they deal with while dealing with the paperwork.

While my entire future family life is in the hands of some office workers, these office workers see the same old forms every single day from thousands of people like me. One day to them, or even just the five minutes it takes to review my case, is the difference of a lifetime to me, and it makes me wonder when I'll see that paperwork again.

I guess we just have to wait. Again.