Thanksgiving days

I remember my first American Thanksgiving probably 40 years ago. One of my closest friends then, a Maryknoll priest, took me to my first American ethnic feast. He was taken aback when I called Thanksgiving an ethnic feast. Why? I asked. You think only we Filipinos have ethnic feasts?

 He brought me to the home of one of his parishioners. Thanksgiving lunch was in the afternoon, a real feast with turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, candied yams, wine in decanters with oranges on the mouths of the decanters. That was memorable for me — the oranges on the decanters. I wondered why but couldn’t ask.  Then after lunch all the men went to the family room to watch the football games.

 Then in the ‘80s I found myself living in San Francisco with my daughter and working as a secretary there. We had just settled. We were in our first flat and I was scrambled, not yet adjusted to the US, had forgotten about my first Thanksgiving there, was not aware of the reverence and gratitude that accompanied this feast for Americans. Also I felt poor and depressed, a bundle of confusion. 

My daughter’s friends invited themselves and the parents of one of them to Thanksgiving lunch, totally unaware that I didn’t know what Thanksgiving was. I didn’t know what to prepare. I went to Walgreen’s that very morning and bought turkey TV dinners and a lot of vodka.  That was the best I could do.  When I think back now I am tremendously embarrassed by my ignorance then. The parents happened to be a Filipino, who later became a member of the Philippine president’s cabinet, and his American wife.

 But after that embarrassment, I learned. The following two years we had a proper Thanksgiving with stuffed turkey.  I was very good at stuffing turkeys. One year I decided to empty the contents of my pantry on the turkey and basted it with hoisin sauce just to finish the hoisin. That turkey was unforgettably delicious.

 Then on my last Thanksgiving there I made cocido, mygrandmother’s recipe, deciding that we were Filipino but we were also profoundly grateful for our blessings in America. My cocido had chicken, beef, chorizos, cabbage, garbanzos, served with tomato sauce, which I made myself from chopped tomatoes, onions and garlic sautéed and the traditional eggplant sauce. To me that was unforgettable.

 Thanksgiving, or the traditional American ethnic feast, is actually the American way of thanking God for their harvest and the blessings they received when they first settled in the USA. It wasn’t originally celebrated in November but much later President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November Thanksgiving Day. It is a genuine tradition with them. All the children who are in college or who have settled in other states come home for the weekend to bond with the family again. For Americans this is a real event. 

 In the United States no Christmas decorations are up before Thanksgiving or even shortly after. In my childhood here Christmas decorations did not go up until the Dec. 15 and came down after the Jan. 6, then the day of the Three Kings. But since then things have gotten so commercial and have changed. In the condo where I live, Christmas décor started to be come up after All Saints Day. Except for me. I am not setting up any décor until December 15, according to my own tradition.

 But as I write this column I wonder why we Filipinos don’t have our own Thanksgiving Day? Why not have one to celebrate our liberty from the colonization of Spain and America described as 300 years in a Spanish convent and 50 years in Hollywood? The Spanish influence is so deeply ingrained we don’t even wonder what life was like for us before the friars came.  However we are quick to flaunt our 50 years in Hollywood.  Watch the reaction to all those ridiculous local TV shows.  I’m sorry but they are ridiculous to me and it pains me that the television networks who have the power to instill the right values in the masses don’t even see these as opportunities. Instead they continue to get them deeper and deeper into a cultural mess. But what can I do? 

 As I write this I think – maybe it is time for me to institute in my small family a Thanksgiving Day that we will celebrate until the day I die. It will begin on the first Sunday after my mother’s birthday. That is the one day of the year we will meet for lunch and be grateful that we have God with us every minute of the day, that we come from the families we are descended from and that we have each other. That is plenty to be thankful for. We will definitely brim with gratitude. Why don’t you do the same with your family?

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