Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is my favorite.
Christmas was great as a kid, but as I grow older I find that the consumerism is something that interests me less and less every year. Halloween was also cool as a kid, but as an adult I don’t enjoy decorating, especially for something that happens once a year.
I know this is going to sound cliché, but I love the reflection and gratitude that happens on Thanksgiving. While my life hasn’t been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I still have so much to be thankful for. Just in this year alone, I have remained safe, warm, and fed during the pandemic. The people that I know have also been able to do the same. I’ve been able to continue my work online, and I’ve even been able to get back to visit my dad in the United States. Thanks to tools like Zoom and Google Docs, I’ve been able to continue teaching while visiting. I’ve also enjoyed luxuries like being able to avoid going to the supermarket by using a grocery delivery service and also getting hot meals like Peruvian food and pizza delivered. The isolation of lockdown and staying in quarantine for two weeks before visiting my dad took their toll on my mental health, but being able to connect with friends virtually and having a therapist during this past year have been a blessing.
I’ve had the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving in different parts of the world and with different people. My first Thanksgiving away from home was with my host family in Germany. They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving there and didn’t really have any concept of what it was, but they knew that it was an important holiday. I remember talking to my parents on the phone, and my host mom Renata knocked on my bedroom door, said “Happy Thanksgiving!” and gave me a Nike sweatshirt that I had for many years after then. When I was in college in Los Angeles I couldn’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving. The college knew that not everyone could make it home, so they organized a Thanksgiving dinner for students that stayed on campus during Thanksgiving break. When living in California, I also received invitations from friends and their families for Thanksgiving, and it was such a nice feeling being invited into their homes and to celebrate with them. During my first year in Chile, a friend that also came over with TeachingChile organized a Thanksgiving weekend at a resort with the largest swimming pool in the world. Everyone brought some food to contribute, and it was such a nice time. I’ve also attended Thanksgiving dinner at a few restaurants in Santiago and a few Friendsgiving celebrations, but for the past three years or so I’ve managed to go back to New Jersey to visit my dad and celebrate with him.
If you’re aren’t familiar with Thanksgiving traditions, it’s a holiday that we celebrate on the fourth Friday in November. We prepare a big meal with dishes like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and more. People usually spend all day cooking, and there’s a parade and football that people watch on TV. I actually found an infographic that has some nice information about the food we eat on Thanksgiving, so if you’d like to see it you can click here.
Growing up, we learned that the pilgrims left England in order to pursue religious freedom. After sailing on the Mayflower to the New World, we learned that the pilgrims befriended the Native Americans. The Native Americans helped them survive the harsh winter, and they celebrated their newfound friendship with a big feast which is our modern-day Thanksgiving.
The reality of Thanksgiving is not as rosy as what I learned growing up. The narrative that I learned about in school is focused on the pilgrims and portrays them as heroes while ignoring the atrocities that occurred. If you’d like to read more about it or share the Native American perspective in your classes, this article gives their view on what happened. An article written by the Smithsonian explores the myths of the Thanksgiving story. Another article by Time magazine suggests other ways of celebrating Thanksgiving.
While I feel it’s important to learn about the reality of what happened and unlearn what I was taught, I still like the sentiment of expressing gratitude and also giving back to others. I’m taking the day today to express gratitude to the important people in my life, and I’m also cleaning out my closets for anything I don’t need to donate to the less fortunate.
This year the celebration was small. It was just my dad, a family friend, and me. Our meal included most of the traditional Thanksgiving foods as well as a cake from a local bakery. For some reason WordPress isn’t cooperating with me posting some photos, so you’ll just have to imagine turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and a cake with mousse filling until I figure out what is happening.
No matter where you are in the world, I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving, are doing well, can find a way to help others, and are able to find the things in life that you are grateful for despite the pandemic.
