Cause Marketing

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, a holiday when we watch parades and American football before eating an enormous feast of turkey, ‘stuffing,’ mashed potatoes and gravy, and then chase it down with slabs of pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Just yesterday I read how the original feast was perhaps 600 calories. Nowadays... the dietary nannies tell us... the Thanksgiving meal might tip the scale at 5 to 10 times as many calories. That news almost makes me want to cut back. Almost. Americans love this holiday. So do Canadians, who celebrate it on the second Monday in October. We North Americans have done our level best to try and export the holiday, but with very limited success. Historian Thomas Fleming tells how our British cousins opened up Westminster Abbey on November 26, 1942 during World War Two for a special Thanksgiving Day service for American servicemen and women, the first-time ever the cathedral had been used in that way. Alas, while the 'Special Relationship'...

The Salvation Army USA, in conjunction with the Dallas Cowboys, Fox Sports, and the National Football League, kicked off its annual kettle drive with a performance by country music star Keith Urban during halftime of the Cowboys – New Orleans Saints game held yesterday, Thanksgiving Day 2010. This is the fourteenth year the Salvation Army and the Cowboys have teamed up. Since 1997, the Salvation Army holiday kettle drive has generated $1.3 billion, $139 million last year alone. I couldn’t find any actual footage yet of the performance, so you’re going to have to trust me for now. But the way the Salvation Army was integrated into the performance itself was more stilted than it should have been. The video footage at left is what we used to call a video news release (VNR) meant to promote the kettle drive kickoff. Immediately before the Urban halftime concert we see footage of him leaving his travel bus parked in the bowels of Dallas Cowboys Stadium. As he walks the corridors toward th...

Dear Faithful Readers: Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, is today. When I say it’s the most American of holidays I mean no offense to my Canadian readers, who celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October. So maybe I should call the most North American of holidays. Some Thanksgiving I’m going to write a post on the things Canadians and American have to be thankful for besides the world’s longest undefended border, a language, an appreciation for smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal, and a great holiday, even if it’s celebrated in separate months. But I have two pumpkin pies to prepare along with an apple caramel pie and my famous pecan pie. So here from 2007 is my favorite Thanksgiving post. Warm regards, Paul Today is Thanksgiving in the States, a day when we watch parades and American football before eating an enormous feast of turkey, ‘stuffing,’ and mashed potatoes, then chase it down with pumpkin pie. We Americans grew up with a cherished myth that the first thank...

Kind Readers: Today in the United States is Thanksgiving Day, a harvest festival primarily in North America. In Canada Thanksgiving occurs on the second Monday in October. Like harvest celebrations everywhere... since time immemorial... it's front-loaded with mythology . But we North Americans have given our modern harvest festival its own distinct spin; it’s a time of gratitude, televised parades , jam-packed airports, a bad Detroit Lions Football game, and feasting. In honor of that part of Thanksgiving I publish a poem from kids’ poet Jack Prelutsky . I Ate Too Much Turkey by Jack Prelutsky I ate too much turkey, I ate too much corn, I ate too much pudding and pie, I’m stuffed up with muffins and much too much stuffin’, I’m probably going to die. I piled up my plate and I ate and I ate, but I wish I had known when to stop, for I’m so crammed with yams, sauces, gravies, and jams that my buttons are starting to pop. I’m full of tomatoes and french fried potatoes, my stomach is sw...