Time to be thankful
In which I reflect on the joy of sharing traditions with friends from other cultures
I was sad to miss Thanksgiving this year. I’m not American, so it’s not something that was ever a family tradition, although by some historical quirk, on the Scottish island where I grew up there used to be a public holiday on the same day as American Thanksgiving, with services of thanksgiving in local churches. For us as kids it just meant we got a day off school. Living abroad, though, you not only experience the festivals and holidays of the local culture; you also get to experience some of the traditions of friends and colleagues from other countries.
This year, our Bake Off gang was planning to celebrate American Thanksgiving together. Through the autumn, there’s been a small group of us — three Americans, one Chinese and me — meeting most weekends to watch The Great British Bake Off. We also try to bake something appropriate to that week’s theme, and have a lot of fun sharing these culinary triumphs and disasters.
Thanksgiving coincided with Dessert Week, and we planned to do something a bit more extravagant. Turkeys are hard to come by in China, and most of us don’t have an oven big enough to roast one in anyway. (Most Chinese kitchens don’t come with an oven; I use a microwave-sized toaster oven). But we planned to roast some other meat, and mash potatoes, and prepare some veggie dishes. I was going to make trifle for dessert, as requested by my American co-worker Mike* who has seen trifle on British TV but never tasted one.
And then the viruses struck. There are a lot of coughs and sneezes going around campus just now. It seems everyone’s immunity is down a bit after three years of Covid lockdowns, so now the common cold is having a field day. There’s probably also more Covid, but no-one’s testing anymore. As it happened, I came down with something the week of Thanksgiving and couldn’t join the meal. Instead, I curled up in a blanket on the sofa and watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The others went ahead, and it sounded like a great feast. I was sad to miss it, but I’ll just have to make my whisky trifle another time.
It got me thinking, though, about other Thanksgivings I’ve had in China. My first was back in Xi’an, where for the first time I was introduced to the traditional pumpkin pie. In those days, Taobao (the ubiquitous shopping app here) was yet to take over people’s phones, and imported goods were hard to come by. I think my American friend had brought some cans of pumpkin pie filling from home, or got them sent in a care package. It was also my first encounter with baked sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, and I confess to still being puzzled by the marshmallows! But the real special thing is the sitting around a feast table with friends and sharing in each other’s traditions, and that’s something I’ll always be thankful for.
American Thanksgiving has also been adopted by some Chinese friends, especially in the Christian community, and perhaps especially among those who have spent some time in the US or had a lot of contact with Americans. The church I was part of for some time when I lived in Beijing made a big thing of it. The Sunday closest to Thanksgiving, the service was a good hour longer than usual, as almost everyone in the congregation got up to share what they were thankful for that year. Another year, they had got a couple of turkeys from somewhere, ready roasted, and everyone lined up to get some of the meat to eat along with the Chinese dishes that we normally had for lunch after the service. Another church, much bigger and more official, would collect donations of canned or otherwise non-perishable food for the few weeks running up to Thanksgiving, then distribute them to under-resourced old folks’ homes on the outskirts of the city, much like the Harvest Thanksgiving a church in the UK might hold slightly earlier in the autumn.
For these Chinese Christians, it’s become a time to celebrate and express thankfulness, without any of the historical context. In fact, many don’t realise that the end-of-November Thanksgiving with turkey and pumpkin pie is a specifically American holiday. I was once asked to organise a Thanksgiving activity for a kids’ group in Beijing, teaching them something about its history and meaning, regardless of the fact that I would have to first learn about it myself. Every November, I get messages from various Chinese friends, Christian and otherwise, wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. I don’t try to explain any more; I just send a Happy Thanksgiving message right back.
With or without turkey, I appreciate the reminder to be thankful and to show thankfulness. I hope that’s something I’ll take with me when I leave. And maybe years to come will find me making my own pumpkin pie in November, as well as tucking into dumplings at Spring Festival and mooncakes at Mid-Autumn. There’s always time to be thankful, and there’s always room for another feast.
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I'm also puzzled by the marshmallows, even though I grew up with this dish. Especially since the traditional way is to first boil all the sweetness and flavor out of the sweet potatoes and then add sweetness (but no flavor) back on top.