by Emma Kelsall
Having never celebrated the holiday before, my prior knowledge of Thanksgiving extended to falling into a food-induced coma and something to do with pilgrims. However, having emigrated from the UK in July, my family decided that they were keen to take up this part of American culture. So on the 28th of November 2019, we chose to celebrate our first Thanksgiving.
What is Thanksgiving?
Realising how little I was educated in the traditions of this holiday I set about finding out what Thanksgiving is and how it was actually celebrated. I recalled my friend from home, Daniil, or Dan as we called him, celebrating Thanksgiving the weekend before. Dan told me he had family friends from America staying over and decided to celebrate a few days early, as Thanksgiving is not considered a bank holiday in the United Kingdom. When I asked him how they celebrated it, he replied “You like eat a big meal and watch the Thanksgiving Thursday football.” Pretty short and to the point, though I could’ve sworn there was more to it than that.
I decided I’d be better off consulting an actual American, who had celebrated Thanksgiving their whole life, and began to wonder why I hadn’t just done that in the first place. Enter fellow member of The East Side Newspaper, Henry Su. Henry said, “Well, in general, people’s families get together around noon, and talk about things such as football or politics. After that, either in the evening or around noon, people eat. Whoever is hosting at their house cooks, and what they cook is up to them, usually large plates or crock pots of food, and there are several staples: turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, potato salad, some other stuff. Sometimes glazed ham depending on who you ask. And people then watch the football game.” Others also commented that foods such as sweet potatoes, yams with marshmallows, and pumpkin pie were served.
As soon as my mum heard the words “turkey dinner,” she somehow translated them into “Christmas dinner.” Traditionally in the UK, turkey is the meat served on Christmas Day, while there are many variations, as my best friend and traitor to the crown, Iona, alternatively eats glazed ham with her family for Christmas dinner. It was decided. Fair game to my mum, she had never cooked a “Thanksgiving Dinner” before but she had conjured up many a wonderful “Christmas Dinner.” And after all, it’s not like we’ve had our Christmas lights up since the start of November or anything…
But trying to keep within the limits of Thanksgiving tradition, she referred to a Good Housekeeping article of interesting Thanksgiving traditions to adopt. While skipping over cool ones such as “going on vacation,” she decided that the Thanksgiving tradition we would adopt was “the kids dress and clear the table.” After pointing out that I do that every night anyway, although admittedly, it would be new to my sister, Amelia, I encouraged her to pick another one. She chose “saying what you are thankful for.” That seemed easy enough. So as the car pulled out of the Transit Middle School car park, we prepared for the wonderful memories that would meet us the following day. Potentially.
The Day Itself
I set my alarm for 8:00am sharp, but I ignored it and hit snooze, so rolling out of bed around 10:30, I made my way downstairs and was presented with my family watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “Em, come check this out it’s insane!” my dad shouted, his eyes filled with glee. Admittedly, he wasn’t wrong. The huge floats and live performances were definitely a step up from the Northwich Carnival Parade in my old hometown, which mainly consisted of some girls sat in princess dresses on the back of a lorry. In reality, the Carnival is only a running tradition because the local boomers reminisce back to the 1963 Carnival, where The Beatles attended and Paul McCartney crowned the Carnival Queen. Everyone under the age of 60 knows that our parade hasn’t been the slightest bit enjoyable for years and would probably pop their clogs after seeing Ashanti on the Kinder float. Personally, my favourite float had to be the giant Smokey the Bear. I liked the way they broadcast information of preventing wildfires while the bear was grinning with a giant bat in his hand; it felt both entertaining and like an open threat. Nonetheless, my family enjoyed it so much, my parents are weighing up going to see it in person next year.
In our family, like many others, it is tradition to get scrubbed up to eat important dinners with relatives, such as the Christmas Day turkey or the Easter lamb joint. Apparently, this tradition doesn’t apply to us for Thanksgiving so I wasted the majority of my morning in a bid to look presentable, while my family turned up to the table in pyjamas.
While traditional Thanksgiving dinners appear to have a more buffet-like format, my mum insisted on the sit down three course dinner like we usually had at Christmas. It started with my mum’s staple, a sort of deconstructed prawn cocktail. We were each given a plate with three shrimp, a bit of smoked salmon, a dollop of marie rose sauce and lettuce and cucumber to garnish.
Then came the main course. Some staples overlapped, such as turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce and vegetables. However in our British ignorance, we insisted on adding a few of our own traditional dishes: roasted potatoes, cauliflower cheese, pigs in blankets. What was most eye-opening for my family was what was sitting on my plate. I’ve been what I call “a pescatarian” and what my family calls “a right pain in the arse” for over a year now. My turkey alternative came in the form of a small breaded cylinder and my mum had to stick toothpicks into my pigs in blankets in order to keep the fake bacon on top. I removed the toothpick and my sister stuck them into the breaded log. I joked that it looked a bit like a hedgehog. “It looks a bit ruddy disgusting,” was my sister’s response.
We engaged in conversation about upcoming trips and events in our lives, before my mum decided it was time to state our thanks. My parents presented long, gushing speeches of how they were thankful for the opportunities this country presents us with and how we’ve made an attempt to settle. However, “I’m thankful for not being raised a Liverpool fan,” is considered inappropriate, apparently.
The rest of the evening was then spent playing Queens and Sevens. Seemingly harmless card games are always the ones that end up being the most explosive when you play them with three people as equally competitive as you, but I, ever the modest one, absolutely crushed them in both games.
All jokes aside, the main thing I enjoyed about Thanksgiving was getting to spend time with my family, something we are all guilty of forgetting the pleasure in, in our hectic everyday lives. That, and also getting four days off school was pretty cool.
