Thanksgiving in Brooklyn
Letter from New York! Luise Müller describes the temptations of feasting and shopping.
Dec 10, 2015
Preparing for Friendsgiving: Luise Müller is celebrating Thanksgiving with friends. Many New Yorkers spend the weekend with their families outside the city.
Image Credit: Private
Dinner is served: The Thanksgiving buffet, with turkey and jellied cranberry sauce.
Image Credit: Private
On the fourth Thursday in November, an important family holiday is celebrated in the United States: Thanksgiving. When my roommate and I were doing last-minute grocery shopping Thursday around noon, the city was already quite empty. Many New Yorkers spend the entire Thanksgiving weekend out of town with their families. The rest – including us – spend the evening with friends, celebrating Friendsgiving.
We met in the afternoon and prepared food for dinner. We brought along Spanish tortillas, cheese-filled bread, and cider. The hostess roasted a turkey that will be served with jellied cranberry sauce. As usual on Thanksgiving, there is pumpkin pie for dessert.
The day after Thanksgiving is all about shopping – many chain stores and smaller shops lure customers with “unbeatable” discounts. Everyone tells me about the long lines at the stores and the legendary behavior of bargain hunters. I feel too lazy to go into town and join the spectacle, so I stay at home – without a bargain, but also without stress.
Incidentally, the Thanksgiving tradition is allegedly based on a harvest dinner shared in 1621 by a group of English Pilgrims from the Plymouth Colony and a group of native Wampanoag. For many Americans, Thanksgiving is an important holiday, in both a positive and a negative sense. Since 1970, the descendants of Wampanoag and other nations have been meeting every year for a National Day of Mourning, in remembrance of the crimes that were committed against their peoples since the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers.