Thanksgiving

Perhaps a good indicator of how "at home" you are in a culture is how much you care about its festivities. Thanksgiving is probably the most American festivity I know. It has not been imported into this country in any way. Which is too bad, in some ways, because isn’t “being grateful for what we have” a pretty important concept in a time where many of us live in (what most people in the history of mankind would view as) unashamed luxury, yet the commercial infotainment around us constantly suggests further unmet desires and needs? Trick-or-treating rode across the Atlantic on a wave of commercials and media, and so did Valentine’s day and the figure of Santa Claus, but Thanksgiving is conspicuously absent. Most Austrians are only very dimly aware of it, and certainly have no concept of its importance in the US.

Consequently, when I first moved to the US, I was very much an indifferent observer. I got invited to something like three Thanksgiving dinners in Seattle, all by nice people who were eager to show us international students what the day was all about. I felt honored to be invited, and clearly it was an important part of learning about American culture, but on a personal level, I would have been just as happy goofing off by myself that day.

Some things about these Thanksgiving dinners struck me as confusing. In particular, the part where everyone walks off after the meal and watches TV: you got your entire extended family together just to watch TV? TV and family gatherings don't go together very well in at least this Austrian's mind. And wouldn’t it be a much nicer prolonged meal if it was served in several courses, instead of one big pile of everything? Another thing I found strange about Thanksgiving dinners was the way people would not care at all if the food got cold. When I cook, I try to minimize the number of things left to do between taking the food off some sort of heat source and people digging in. But at those Thanksgiving dinners, people took their sweet time putting the food on cold serving platters, then calling everyone to the table, then someone would ceremonially carve the turkey (perhaps with precious time wasted before, figuring out who’d get to do the honors), then everything got served onto cold plates (the most illustrious guest first, meaning he/she would end up with the coldest food in the end), then maybe a toast or a prayer…and all the while, I would sadly watch the food equilibriate with its surroundings and the cold plates. Then, after half an eternity, we would finally eat, and the food was usually very good, but boy, it would have been excellent (quite) a few degrees warmer.

I got invited to two very fun Thanksgiving dinners the first two years in Tucson, involving large crowds and having more of a “party” feel, but Thanksgiving did not become “real” to me until the third year in Tucson, in which the rapidly cooling plate of food looked like this:

It was cooling rapidly because we, a group of adventurous friends, were eating it on a campground, which can be a chilly affair in November, even in Arizona. We had just returned from a two-day backpacking trip through the (waterless) Superstition Mountains. We were hungry and wiped out, but we cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner on two gas stoves and a campfire - except for the turkey, which was not a turkey, but a rotisserie chicken bought in Superior, AZ. The rotisserie chicken proved two things to me: 1. In a pinch, it is a perfectly fine substitute for a turkey, and 2. A chicken with all the Thanksgiving sides is a perfectly filling meal for five to six. With the chicken, we had sweet potatoes, stuffing (with the rest of the trailmix thrown in), cranberry sauce, tomatillos, green beans, a grilled squash, wine and lots of fun and we surely were very grateful for the good food. There is something wonderful about eating good food after two days of backbreaking physical work carrying gallons of water through the desert.

Thanksgiving 2010 was a dinner for two, prepared by Steve. The meal was excellent and involved an appropriately sized piece of turkey, home-baked dinner rolls and a cranberry dessert. I had many things to be grateful for: I had just pulled out of some difficult times, found a new position and an apartment and I was starting a beautiful new relationship. Thanksgiving 2011, Steve and I hosted together. Everything, including the cranberry sauce, was made from scratch. I stuffed a squash with a filling containing dried mushrooms from Niedere Tauern and wore my Austrian outfit. We made sure the food stayed warm, and the TV-watching was replaced by a constitutional walk around the neighborhood. Our two guests were Erika and Zhen, a Chinese student who would have been just as happy goofing off by herself that day. I think it is safe to say that I have arrived “on the other side”.

I thought that this year, I would do a Thanksgiving dinner for my friends here in Vienna. I would tirelessly run through Viennese stores to find all the necessary ingredients and spend the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving preparing the meal. Now it is Sunday. I have tirelessly run through Viennese stores for completely different things. I am proud of finally having bought groceries and made some sort of plan of cooking basic food for myself. I am finally, today, getting round to cleaning up the apartment for the first time since moving in, but am still way too disorganized to even buy a rotisserie chicken. I completely missed Thanksgiving, save for a very late night skype call to Steve’s family.

It does feel like I truly missed something. It is the first Thanksgiving-less year in six. I have many things to be grateful for: I wrote a dissertation and graduated, found a new position and an apartment, and Steve is coming over here very soon. All my loved ones are doing well. Leaving Arizona was very sad, but at the same time, I had so many wonderful experiences, and I received so much friendship, love, and appreciation from people there that gratitude is at least as important of a feeling these days as sadness. And I miss Thanksgiving to express my gratitude for these things in an “official” setting.

And, of course, a decent, home-cooked meal wouldn’t hurt either.