A Parisian Thanksgiving

This year was the second year in a row for me to be away from home on Thanksgiving, but the first to be in a different country of course. It's a time of year that reminds us of all the good things we have in life. A time to gather with family and think about all the advantages we have. Last year I celebrated with a family friend and her family near Atlanta because I had so much school work to do over the break that I just couldn't go home. It was different then, but also very much the same. When you live in a country that doesn't observe a similar holiday and is generally unaware that such a holiday exists in the States, it is very very different. For me, the absence of Thanksgiving sort of sneaked up on me. If it weren't for Facebook I probably would have forgotten about it completely. As it turned out, I spent a very enjoyable Thanksgiving day doing nothing really out of the ordinary. I went to class, babysat for my regular Thursday evening kids, and on Friday attended the Sweetbriar Program's Thanksgiving Dinner. It was nice, but so very different.





I wouldn't say Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family, but compared to other celebrations, I guess you might say it is a big deal. With a big family like mine, holidays tend to be bigger and more exciting. For Thanksgiving, my family celebrates on Friday. Weird, I know, but that's just the way the cool people do it. It generally involves the entire Morgan side of the family gathering at my Grandmother's house. That's generally in the neighborhood of eighteen to twenty people, including my Grandmother, four aunts and uncles, three cousins, two nieces, four sisters (including a sister-in-law), the parents, and depending on the year, a couple of extra friends or extended family members. It's pretty much Christmas without all the presents. We also have a few fun traditions, which make the holiday special. The biggest one has a little story that's worth telling.

When my sisters and I were kids, we weren't exactly the best road trip companions. It takes about an hour to drive from our house to my Grandmother's house, and we would get pretty bored in the car all that time (when you're a little kid, an hour in the car seems worse than it really is), and would generally drive my Mom crazy the whole time. So one year when we were driving home from Thanksgiving, my Mom came up with this idea for us to count all the houses with Christmas decorations up on the way home. Everybody could make a guess before we left, and when we got home whoever was closest got to have the last piece of pie. And it has become a beloved tradition in our house. There are certain rules that have to be observed. For example, if there aren't any lights on the house, but you can see a Christmas tree in the window, then it counts as one. If a city puts up decorations on all the telephone poles or something similar, all of those count as one; you can't count every telephone pole in the city. The final and most important rule is that Mom is the final arbiter, so whatever she says goes. It's become quite competitive over the years with special rules about guesses being instigated as well. Everyone who wants to guess gets to guess, parents and grown-ups included. When you make your guess, you aren't allowed to know what anyone else's guess is, and your guess is written down so you can't change it later. A few years ago my Mom got one of those clicker counting things for Christmas to facilitate accurate counting during the big event. The count varies a lot from year to year. One of the highest I remember was around 130 or so, but this year I'm told it was only about 80.

With all of this going on, you can understand why Thanksgiving away from home without much of a fanfare at all felt so weird for me. But I did have a nice time and did some great things. Somewhat appropriately, most of my Thanksgiving-related festivities occurred on the Friday after Thanksgiving. One of the highlights of my week is Fridays. I don't have any actual classes, so I get to go student-teach English to my class of eleven-year-old boys. I almost always go home with some funny story about something they said or did. This week, I talked to them some about Thanksgiving. We had a lot of discussion about certain vocabulary words, and what the French equivalent was. I didn't tell the traditional "story" because personally, I don't think it has a lot to do with the holiday. It's a nice story and all, but that's not really what the holiday is all about, in my opinion. When you're sitting at Thanksgiving dinner, you don't think about Pilgrims and Indians, you think about your family and your blessings. I'd discussed it with the teacher beforehand, and we had decided that if one of the students knew the story they could tell it, but for the most part she didn't think it was that relevant either. I was all prepared to ask if anyone knew the story and get nothing but blank stares. But what do you know, little Marin knew the story and told it almost perfectly all in English (with the most adorable French accent). I was totally blown away. It was quite possibly one of the cutest things I've seen in a while.

Thanksgiving has never been one of those holidays that I look forward to throughout the year. I'm much more of a Christmas person. It's a great excuse to give people things that you know they'll like and appreciate, which I love. I also love the season in general, with the cold weather and the Christmas Carols and all the decorations and stuff. It's a great time of year for me. Here in France, there is no Thanksgiving season to come between October and December, so the day after La Toussaint (All Saints' Day- November 1st), all the Christmas decorations go up at the major tourist and shopping areas. I really enjoy it. I pass by Galleries Lafayette (Huge high-end department store, always crowded and very touristy) nearly everyday on my way to my classes, and they've been all decked out for weeks. They have these display windows full of toys and clothes. My favorite displays so far are the Disney Princesses. For an entire block, they have five large displays, one each for a disney princess. There's Cinderella with all her little friends, her dress, a storybook, etc. On down the line you have similar things going on with Sleeping Beauty (with Dragon-Maleficent's spiky tail weaving throughout the display), Snow White (surrounded by the vertically challenged), Rapunzel (with gobs of hair draped everywhere), and Belle (magic rose and Beast included). When you walk into the store, there's a full sized sparkly Cinderella carriage front and center. I pity all the parents of the little girls in Paris. So while there isn't a Thanksgiving season here, it's not all bad for a Christmas junkie such as myself.

Some of my Thanksgiving dinner buds.

I did end up having a really delicious and completely free Thanksgiving dinner on Friday night (Dad would say it was "included" but I'm sticking with gratuit) Nearly everyone in the program all piled into one American restaurant in Paris. It was sorta fun because there was American paraphernalia everywhere, and had the feel of an upscale sports bar kind of thing. But the restaurant wasn't exactly prepared for all sixty or so of us even though they'd been given quite a fair warning. We sat down at 7:30pm and I didn't make it out of there until about 10:30 (and I was one of the first to leave). They didn't have enough servers and the service was very slow, but the company was good, so it wasn't really a bad experience.

I had one glass of wine with dinner, and honestly was sort of disappointed. For some reason, they served us a California Cabernet. It was good, but we're in Paris! What is California wine doing in France?

There were three courses, and we had a choice between at least three things, all of which we had picked out in advance. On the menu, it said New England Clam Chowder. This is what I got. It was delicious, and there were clams in it, but this was no chowder. It was pretty much a minestrone-type base with clams, vegetables, and those crackers on top. A little spicy and really good. Kinda like a mix between vegetable soup and gumbo.

Here's the main event. We got turkey with stuffing and some seriously sinful gravy, as well as green beans and sweet potatoes. Green beans are one of my favorites, so I was happy. Normally, I'm not big on sweet potatoes. But there was something about these that made them pretty awesome. No marshmallows or anything mixed in, just the sweet potatoes. There must have been some secret ingredient, but I'm not sure what it was. Needless to say, I almost completely cleaned my plate.  

The final touch was the Pumpkin Pie. Honestly, I don't think they spiced it up enough. It needed some more nutmeg and cinnamon in my opinion. But it was still good, and I ate all of it.

By the time I got home around 11pm, I realized that I had missed my Skype date with everyone at Grandma's house before they sat down to eat. We did manage to fit in something quick, but there were technical difficulties and we didn't have much time to talk since it was nearly dinner time for them by the time I got home. But I still got to see nearly everyone, which was nice.

So all in all, it was a pretty successful international Thanksgiving. I did get to place a guess for the Christmas lights (92; I was off by 12), got to speak briefly with my family, and got to spend some time with cool people at Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe next year I'll actually make it home.