Thanksgiving

Author: Liam Bodlak

Location: Germany

Pronouns: He/Him/His

I’ll admit to not knowing Germans didn’t celebrate thanksgiving until around mid September. It’s so ingrained in our culture, I figured everyone celebrated it in some facet, no matter how US centric it is. However, we didn’t get the day off for Thanksgiving, and most people I met here either knew about it but didn’t celebrate it, or had never even really heard about it. We did, however, have a Thanksgiving celebration put on by our university. It was interesting. All of the staple thanksgiving foods were there (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes), and the international students that came seemed very intrigued at this foreign (to them, at least) tradition.

One thing that caught my attention was the way the Thanksgiving story was told. We were treated to a presentation by some American students about Thanksgiving, and it was the standard story that every American is used to hearing, with the good feelings between pilgrims and natives. I was wondering whether or not a more critical version of the story would be told, as recently the colonialism of the holiday has been called into question, and many find it distasteful to celebrate a holiday started by heinous actions like this. None of this controversy was mentioned in the speech, however, and we went on with the meal. It was a good time with better people. I missed my family for sure, but I really enjoyed getting to enjoy the meal with people who I’ve become extremely close to recently. It’s well past Thanksgiving, but to everyone reading this, I hope you and yours had a great Thanksgiving, whether you’re in America or elsewhere.