Reflections on Thanksgiving

I went to a beautiful Thanksgiving eve worship service last Wednesday night. It was held in a large Episcopal church in Palm Desert and the minister from the Lutheran church where we have been attending was preaching. I have fond memories of attending this type of service prior to our move to Europe so it was something I really wanted to do. The sanctuary was gorgeous.  Big choir, big organ, fine liturgy...it was just what I needed! As I left I began to reflect on a couple of things. First, it’s still a little strange at times to be the congregant and not the pastor. I like going to church and not being the one worrying about every little detail, but I miss crafting the services and preparing well to give others a meaningful experience. And those reflections got me thinking about Thanksgiving memories in general. 

This was only the 3rd Thanksgiving day I have spent the US for the past 20 years. Once, while we were living in Sweden, we made a trip back to spend Thanksgiving with Doug’s family and to celebrate my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary which was in December. Two years ago we were here in the desert and Doug’s mom and sister joined us. This year Doug and I spent the holiday apart. Doug flew to MN to be with his mom and the rest of the Fondell clan and I stayed in the desert to take care of our 11 month old pup. We just weren’t quite ready to find care for her for week. And it’s been good. Good for me to be the primary care-giver to Maddie and good for Doug to spend time with his mom and family. 

While growing up, the focus on Thanksgiving weekend was on my dad’s football teams. The post-season play-offs were in full tilt and if his team was not playing, well, there was a pall upon the household. Fortunately, his success meant that most Thanksgivings we were engaged in a Friday night lights situation and that meant that Thursday morning there would be practice. But dad always made it fun with ending the practice with a field goal kicking contest that every player would participate in followed by a major pie feast. The parents would bring pies and lots of extra folks would come and serve them up. Each player got 1/4th of a pie and there was feasting and merriment all around! It was also Southern California so it was very warm. We’d then enjoy a Thanksgiving feast at the beautiful home of my dad’s team Dr.’s house where we could also swim and play tennis if we wanted to. But because my dad was always crazy with football and because we always went to these friend’s house, I didn’t grow up with the preparation of Thanksgiving aromas wafting through the house and I didn’t even watch my mom make the meal. 

My college years were spent with invitations to various friend’s houses. Memorable Thanksgivings include one in Detroit where we attended the Lions NFL game, especially meaningful since at that time one of my dad’s former players was playing for the Lions! Another highlight was a trip to DC to spend the holiday in Maryland with a group of college friends. I recall seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, thinking it so odd that the sun was setting behind me on the beach, seeing beautiful Washington D.C. for the first time and a crazy mishap with marshmallows and an oven door. Trust me, cleaning up melted marshmallow from a hot oven door is not a fun thing to do on Thanksgiving day!

The years I spent in Colombia revealed to me that Thanksgiving would become the holiday that I was most homesick in all my years of living abroad. The November holiday is a uniquely American thing and it is the one day that the entire nation eats pretty much the same thing with small variations on the sides. And so to be in a foreign country where I had to work and where nothing was geared toward the holiday, well, I just felt the most out of step with home than any other day. The PTA of the school where I was teaching in Colombia always put on such a lovely dinner for us teachers but it wasn’t quite the same. I do recall one parent saying to me once, “This Thanksgiving holiday you have...it’s a lovely thing”. That has always stayed with me. 

Soon after I met Doug we often were in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving which became a fun new tradition for me. Other times we were with church friends, especially if Doug had responsibilities over the weekend in his church. The inter-faith service that our community in Chicago participated in was always a real treat, because the rabbis joined us and the theology of the day worked for Thanksgiving without any real compromise on anyone’s part. 

The move to Sweden meant being away from the US again on the holiday. The first year, I didn’t really think it would matter but then it was Thanksgiving weeks and those old longings were emerging. I wasn’t a great cook when we first moved to Sweden and so I was on the phone with my mom a lot, asking about the timing of things and especially about how to make gravy! The internet was just emerging as a “thing” so looking up anything you need to know and watching a YouTube video to learn wasn’t quite on the radar yet. I remember going to the store on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was quiet. Not many shopping then in Stockholm. I was thinking about the contrast of the stores in the US that very moment. I tried to piece together a meal from unfamiliar ingredients. We ended up with roast chicken and soggy stuffing and some potatoes. It was all quite unceremonious. But over the years, I finally figured out that I needed to take THURSDAY off and make it my own holiday!  And then the magic of Thanksgiving really took off. I had to search high and low for a 9 or 10 pound turkey, and pay a fortune for it but it was definitely worth it. We often had lingonberries instead of cranberries but it worked! We began a tradition of inviting a few Americans but always had some folks who had never experienced a Thanksgiving dinner. I loved creating a beautiful table, filling it with delicious food and gathering friends around. My folks came over for Thanksgiving one year with a 20 pound turkey in their luggage! It almost didn’t fit in my tiny Europe-sized oven! But we had two tables full of people, each one with a memorable story and something profound to be thankful for.  Anytime friends were coming to Stockholm during the autumn, it was a given that they’d be bringing canned pumpkin, a bag of pecans and stuffing mix! Throughout the years we enjoyed welcoming different folks to the table and it was pure joy. I miss gathering folks from the around the world at our table and now those longings emerge here in the US. Often on Friday morning I would peruse the internet, enjoying my own version of Black Friday. I was never a Black Friday shopper but enjoyed seeing what deals were on offer even if I wasn’t ordering anything. For me, it was about connecting with my homeland, something i think every person living in a foreign country feels the need to do no matter how far removed from one’s own culture you are.

The Thanksgivings in London and Paris were wonderful and unique each in their own right. In London, the church held a big Thanksgiving potluck the Sunday before Thanksgiving so that was a lot of fun prepping and cooking food for that. Then on Thanksgiving day we participated in a big worship service at St Paul’s cathedral, not a bad way to give thanks! In Paris, there was also a big worship service, and the English speaking Rabbi gave the message so it was nice connection to our Chicago days.  

The church hosted a big meal but not on Thanksgiving day so I wanted to do my own meal. But turkeys were hard to find and expensive and French chickens are so delicious that I roasted chickens and made all the sides and our intern and his wife, and their best friends who were visiting feasted with us!  I didn’t have any of my own decorations or table ware so I used ceramic yogurt cups as flower vases and made a table runner out of pictures from my favorite table decorations, the picture above, from Stockholm! By then I had perfected making gravy and liberally used French butter in just about everything, including my home made pie crust which has now become a signature dish of mine! In fact, I used the last of the French butter I imported to make my apple pie this year. 

This year was a holiday spent with friends while Doug was with family. We have a friend we met in Paris coming to visit us for the coming week so I will make a turkey dinner so we can enjoy some of the leftovers! I remember 2 years when Doug’s mom and sister were here, I was so excited to know that I could get every ingredient that I wanted in abundance and didn’t have it do any recipe gymnastics to make something work! 

Thanksgiving became memorable for us through the years instead of being a day of loneliness and longing because we decided to forge new experiences and traditions in a variety of settings with a wide variety of friends. Of course you miss loved ones when you hop around the world like we do but you learn to satisfy your longings through creatively engaging new traditions. But no matter where in the world you are, or how much distance separates you from people you long to be sharing the day with, Thanksgiving is about being grateful for the abundance of blessing we enjoy in this life. OK, Thanksgiving is also about butter and gravy. But it is a very good reminder to be grateful. This Thanksgiving holiday we have, it really is a beautiful thing. No matter what, there’s something to be grateful for. It’s good to think about that and say it out loud sometimes.