It’s Thanksgiving week in the US, and longtime readers know just how I feel about that: “Bah humbug.” Same goes for Christmas and Easter and all the rest of it.

I amused myself Sunday going through the archives to see how my Thanksgiving week previews evolved since 2017. Long story short, they became more abrasive over time, culminating in last year‘s overtly caustic obloquy.

“It’s a short trading week in the US, where Americans will gather with family members and plus-ones to eat themselves into a gravy-drunk stupor in celebration of the time their ancestors were bailed out by the locals, who didn’t have the heart to let entire communities of pale, hapless settlers freeze and starve,” I wrote, adding the following,

No Native Americans will be invited to Thanksgiving feasts across the country. What few are left will spend the day drinking vodka on reservations, which is to say Thanksgiving will be just like the day before and every other day since their culture was systematically purged by multiplying European outcasts unironically trumpeting the many virtues of freedom and waving around declarations about equal rights on the way to committing some of the worst, race-based atrocities yet known to mankind. Think about that when you’re forced to hold hands with your half-sister’s fourth fiancé or your second cousin’s adult child at the dinner table this week. When it’s your turn to say what you’re thankful for, say “I’m thankful I wasn’t on The Trail of Tears,” which Wikipedia at least has the decency to identify as an “ethnic cleansing” now. Points for historical accuracy.

I wasn’t always that abrasive. In 2021, for example, I merely noted that, “Market participants in the US will take a day off this week to gorge themselves on viscous, canned gravy and fall asleep watching pro football in observance of the time Native Americans saved a band of ignorant settlers from starving, a favor the settlers later repaid by committing genocide.” (That’s pretty mordant too, now that I re-read it.)

We tell ourselves a different story about Thanksgiving. That white-washed version says families gather joyously at tables around the country to express gratitude for kinship and the myriad blessings associated with living in an advanced economy, a tradition loosely related to a jointly-held banquet at which Native Americans and European settlers celebrated peaceful coexistence.

Either way — and I’m still quoting from my 2021 Thanksgiving preview here — you’ll have Thursday off and probably Friday too. Friday, you’ll note, is when Americans gather at their local big box stores to engage in ceremonial combat. Winner gets a discounted flatscreen that Jeff Bezos would’ve gladly delivered to your door for an even cheaper price. (If you make it out of Target alive with a buggy full of bargains, don’t forget to pick up the severed head of a vanquished shopper foe, hoist it high by its matted, bloody hair and emit a shrill victory cry while beating your chest, King Kong-style, with your off hand: “AYYEEERRRRGGHHHHAAAAH!”)

The compressed data docket in the US includes personal income and spending data for October. That release will, of course, come packaged with an update on PCE prices. Core inflation on the Fed’s preferred gauge probably rose 0.3% MoM, Wall Street economists (who’ll take substantially all of the next seven weeks off, while first responders, nurses, baristas and waiters work themselves to death) reckon.

As the figure shows, a 0.3% print would be the second straight (September’s MoM reading was an unrounded 0.25384%).

Those readings are too warm. But if you get the sense no one cares anymore, you’re not wrong. The Fed’s not committed to that “last mile.” It’s not that they’ve resigned themselves to the inevitability of above-target inflation in perpetuity, it’s more that they think this’ll work itself out at some point over the next 12 to 18 months. The new administration’s policy proposals are a big wild card, though. Suffice to say the Fed’s very likely to press pause on the rate cuts at one of the next two or three meetings. Whether that’s December’s gathering I don’t know. Neither does the Fed yet.

The November FOMC minutes will be released on Tuesday. Traders will parse those for any discussion of the election outcome. “While it is clearly too soon to begin making policy decisions based on what ‘could’ happen once Trump retakes the White House, there is nothing to prevent the Committee from having a candid discussion on the ramifications of renewed trade war tensions in 2025,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked, before quickly adding that although “the market would surely like greater clarity on this topic, we don’t expect the Minutes to offer anything beyond the traditional ‘wait-and-see’ stance.”

Have a look at the figure below, from Lyngen. You’ve likely seen some version of it by now, but it’s worth highlighting again all the same. It shows the history of two-year yields following the first Fed cut.

“Two-year yields climbed more than 70bps since the Fed’s 50bps rate cut on September 18th, a stark divergence from the historical, post-cut norms for 2s,” Lyngen wrote, noting that if past were precedent, front-end yields would be lower right now. The grey line is the mid-90s soft landing. You can perhaps see why the zeitgeist has shifted back in favor of “no landing.”

The BEA will release the second estimate of Q3 GDP shortly before October PCE data on Wednesday. The focus there will be on any revisions to the personal spending component. I doubt we’ll get anything that moves the needle.

Also on the US docket: Conference Board confidence, jobless claims (a day early, obviously) and the last of this month’s housing data, including updates on the two national price gauges (for September), as well as new and pending home sales (covering October).

Coming full circle, I’ll leave you with excerpts from my 2022 Thanksgiving week preview, my personal favorite.

US investors will pause this week in solemn remembrance of the generosity bestowed upon early settlers by benevolent locals who, as it turns out, shouldn’t have been so generous.

Who knows what actually transpired prior to and during any “first Thanksgivings” (historians think they know, but not having been there, it’s hard to say). What we do know is that without an assist from the people who were unknowingly witnessing the beginning of the end for their way of life, the settlers would’ve had even more trouble than they did.

Several centuries later, the original Americans are largely relegated to an unfortunate collection of de facto colonies (a tragic irony if ever there were one), and “new Americans” celebrate the autumn harvest with awkward buffets, typically featuring core family members, an eclectic mix of peripheral relatives and a few extras (somebody always brings the new fiancé).

In modernity, the formal, at-the-table meal lasts only as long as it has to. Around 15 minutes in, anyone younger than 21 excuses themselves to their social media timelines. Shortly thereafter, most of the remaining males at the table excuse themselves to the living room to observe a tangential, and even more sacred tradition: Thanksgiving NFL football.

Most of the food isn’t eaten immediately, but rather left out, typically on large kitchen islands, under tinfoil, for people to pick at for the rest of the evening. At roughly 8 PM, local (usually core) family leaves, accompanied by a semi-sincere show of affection characterized by what I call “distance hugs” (where outstretched arms do the majority of the work because legs and torso remain five feet apart) and mafia-style cheek kisses.

Around 10 PM, the host family secures the edges of the tinfoil on the dinner dishes which all go into the refrigerator, irrespective of whether a given item needs to be refrigerated. A few minutes later, the host family reminds the peripherals (who almost invariably come from out of town and are thus consigned to an awkward night in a house that’s not theirs with people they barely know) where the fresh towels in the guest bathroom are. Then everyone retires to rooms with closed doors.

I’m not sure the Wampanoag would be enamored. And, really, I don’t think Susan Page would be either. Of course, nobody cares what she thinks anymore. For two decades, her indelible gaze upon opening the door for two weary travelers was as synonymous with the last Thursday in November as turkey and cranberry sauce. Today, she looks out at no one from dying cable television channels.

Americana is passé. Those who want to set the clock back to a bygone era pine away for all the wrong things about the country’s past. And those who rightly seek to relegate those wrongs to the dustbin of history are so busy banishing the bad that they can’t be bothered with what was good.