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Alan Cumming Is Conflicted About Thanksgiving, But Enjoys His Veggie Haggis

He likes a feast, moral-consciousness aside.
He likes a feast, moral-consciousness aside. Photo: Henry S. Dziekan III

Over at the Barneys launch party for Gaga’s workshop, Grub Street chatted with Alan Cumming about his curious Thanksgiving plans, given that he’s (1) from Scotland and (2) a vegetarian. Unsurprisingly, he has a very unique, and uncensored, POV.

Are you guys doing Thanksgiving dinner?
We’re going to have Thanksgiving lunch at our favorite veggie café, Kate’s, a vegan Thanksgiving lunch, and then I’m flying to Scotland to get away from these awful celebrations of the genocide of the indigenous population. I’m going back to my homeland where we don’t celebrate killing a whole race of natives.

When you go to Scotland, do you eat haggis?
Sometimes. I eat veggie haggis.

There is such a thing?
Yeah, it’s delicious. Really delicious.

But isn’t the skin, like, skin?
It used to be; traditionally, they used to cook it inside a sheep’s bladder, but they don’t do that anymore … Actually, it was more like whatever sausages are cooked in, I don’t know, like a skin of old cow’s hooves or something. I don’t know. Some horrible cancer-ridden piece of something picked off a floor.

Do you do that every year, avoid Thanksgiving?
No. I quite like Thanksgiving. I mean, I don’t enjoy why it exists, but I like a sort of pagan reason for everyone to get together and basically have Christmas but without the religion. I like that. It’s just a shame, of course, that it has to be tinged with genocide. But I do actually enjoy it. I like feasts.

Alan Cumming Is Conflicted About Thanksgiving, But Enjoys His Veggie Haggis