12 Nov Stories from Staff: My First Thanksgiving Dinner by Angela Lertkiratikul
The first time I remember ever learning about Thanksgiving, my first grade class put on a play titled, “The First Thanksgiving Dinner!” All of our family and faculty of the school were invited to come to our classroom and watch our class dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans as each of us explained a part of the origin of how the holiday came to be. As a first-generation, Thai-American, our family never traditionally celebrated Thanksgiving to start with. For all I knew and understood, Thanksgiving was just a celebratory feast to commemorate a special occasion.
It’s exactly how my family treated our first Thanksgiving, a celebratory feast to commemorate a special occasion.
On most Thanksgivings and other major holidays, my parents were both always scheduled to work, since their careers were in the hospitality industry. However, there was one year both of my parents miraculously were not scheduled to work at all on Thanksgiving. It truly was a rare, special occasion to commemorate. Of course, the main consensus was to spend time together as a family, so it was decided among the entire family that Thanksgiving was to be held at our home this year. I wondered what our version of Thanksgiving would look like. Would we follow the Thanksgiving traditions I learned from a play in first grade, or create customs of our own? The answer ended up being both.
We watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade together in the morning on NBC. Once our entire family showed up and the time came for us to come together to eat our celebratory feast, we didn’t have a turkey as the main dish but a roasted duck. Our “gravy” was just a thick sauce made of soybean paste, spices, and fresh herbs. The “honey-baked ham” was replaced by the honey-roasted BBQ pork. Green bean casserole (or any dish that would normally contain vegetables) was replaced by a huge platter showcasing an assortment of different vegetables from Thailand and America, “Because there’s a difference between American eggplant and Thai eggplants”, my mother said. The only salad offered is papaya salad which is a deliciously odd combination of both sour and spicy. There is no option for sweet potato or mashed potato, but there is an option between sticky rice or jasmine rice. The only dessert we all seemed to munch on after, if we had any room left, were sesame balls and some pandan coconut cake. We made sure to go around the table and share what we were thankful for. Of course, we continued to eat leftovers in different forms for days. This was my family’s version of Thanksgiving. An American tradition remixed with Thai inspiration.
As I grew older, I would go on to experience many different remixed versions of how my friends’ and partners’ families celebrated Thanksgiving. At the end of the day, it still always felt like a celebratory feast to commemorate a special occasion. How one may define a special occasion and what to include in this celebratory feast is entirely up to them. For me, being surrounded by loved ones and bringing papaya salad to share — both to eat and to contribute a part of my version of Thanksgiving — is good enough for me.