Thanksgiving in England

Happy Thanksgiving from a land where they’ve barely heard of the Holiday!

I was feeling really crap about it this morning. Every place I’ve lived previously, I’ve had a few Americans around in my social group and so I’ve always had a small gathering for Thanksgiving. This year, though, I haven’t been actively seeking out expats in years past. Natively speaking the local language makes it much less urgent and I just haven’t bothered. But no close American friends seemed to mean no Thanksgiving.

However, Paula, who is British, remembered that it was a holiday for me. She lived in Tehran for years, so, although she doesn’t know anything about Thanksgiving, she knows what it’s like to live someplace where Christmas isn’t celebrated, so she told me to come over.

We went to the local grocery sore and got some food items. There is no tofurkey in this country (something to be thankful for), so we found an acceptable local substitute. We had fake turkey escalopes, mashed parsnips, string beans, stuffing, gravy and pumpkin pie.

In the finest tradition of Thanksgiving, we set the stuffing on fire. Ok, my grandma used to burn the rolls, but it’s similar. A pan was blindly jammed into the oven, causing the stuffing to fall off the back of the rack and directly into the fire. We ate it anyway. It was a bit . . . dry.

There was also pumpkin pie, which I explained was traditional. Paula said that she had pie tins, and I had a baked pumpkin at the ready. Her pie tin was square. One makes do when one is overseas. Adapts to local customs and the like. Also, there’s a terrible math joke this in that sometimes pi r square.

Paula was similarly gobsmacked that one would put pumpkin in a pudding, which is the British term for dessert. Then we watched some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel much better now than I did a few hours ago.