Shuksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. It’s a time of family, friends, food, and our annual Gettle family “bog walk.” More importantly, it’s a holiday unencumbered by the frenzy that has totally enveloped our other big holiday, Christmas. In fact, Thanksgiving almost seems like it is as much the celebration of sanity, a last big breath before the plunge into the Christmas pool of brash spending, stressful baking, and overly dramatic holiday parties, than it is merely a holiday celebrating our history and thankfulness. Like an opposing answer to Lent’s Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving seems to be the comparatively somber observance before the gluttony of Christmas commences.

Wait though! Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas. Ever since I was a child, some of my most enduring memories are stirred out of the excitement that I feel around Christmas day. Getting up early to open stocking presents. Playing with our annual Lego sets. Knowing that all of us have nothing else to do for the rest of the day besides spend time together. A lot of my excitement, especially now, is due to our family’s slow, but purposeful distancing of itself from the regular Bacchus consumerism that rampages much of American society leading up to the day. We still struggle, sifting through piles of Hammacher Schlemmer catalogs for the most “appropriate” gifts for people we barely know as if doing so is going to offset the fact that we rarely see or speak with them. It’s hard to escape the expectations. And, frankly, giving feels good. But that’s not what it’s all about. Waking up on Christmas morning, all that preparing and frenzy means little. The focus instead turns to family, solace from the every-day-grind, and, in my family, the birth of Jesus.

I like Christmas. I like Thanksgiving more. But I’m not writing this post as a lampoon of the direction I see the holidays going or an argument as to which one is better. This is, I guess, more an exploration of what Thanksgiving, a fundamentally American holiday, has come to mean to me here in this journey of my life away from home.

I realize now, maybe most importantly, that the idea behind Thanksgiving as a celebration is, anecdotally at least, a pretty universal thing. A month or so ago I wrote about the Muslim Eid Adha (their big holiday). If you read that post, you will recall that I celebrated with my host family at their home. Although the Eid Adha and Thanksgiving/Christmas celebrate entirely different historical events, throughout the day, from the slaughtering of the sheep to the numerous meals with numerous family members and friends (most new to me), I couldn’t help feeling that these holidays are all essentially recognizing the same thing: that there is a lot to be thankful for and that it is good to sit down with the ones you love and celebrate it. Lots of food doesn’t hurt!

For me there is indeed a lot to be thankful for. At Eid Adha I thought about it in the context of my life in Tafoghalt. I thought how thankful I am for my wonderful host family, for my beautiful home, and for the new friends I’ve made and the generosity they and their families have poured on me. I am thankful for the opportunities I’ve been afforded and the every-day-adventures that fill my life.

Here in Peace Corps culture, as in America, Thanksgiving is the underdog to Christmas in the importance we place on it. Volunteers tend to stick around, while at Christmas they tend to try and find ways out of the country, whether that means back to the USA or just someplace else that actually acknowledges the holiday’s existence. In this alone, I find more reason to like Thanksgiving. The other Peace Corps volunteers around me have become my family and to have this chance to come together with no other intention but to eat, drink, and be with one another is something I value with all my heart. No other time of year does it seem like so much effort is put into doing so.

While Eid was a time of appreciating my life in its everyday level, Thanksgiving gave me a chance to see the many things I am thankful for in the broader scope of my life. Sitting in a warm and generously donated chalet style hotel lounge amid the mud brick houses and snow capped peaks of a rural Moroccan mountain village, and surrounded by a room full of energetic, loud volunteers and Moroccans and two tables piled high with freshly made “American” food, I couldn’t help feeling a little overwhelmed by appreciation. Appreciation for the moment. Appreciation for the experience at large. And appreciation for the people who not only got me here, but are continually getting me through. I miss my family back home without a doubt, but after nearly two years together with these people enduring shared hardships, disappointments, and, less-frequently, the triumphs that come with this life, I realize that I was in the midst of the next best thing: an unofficial family galvanized in this shared experience of Peace Corps Morocco.

 

 




Being away from home seems to motivate volunteers into making a compensatingly Hulked out version of the normal Thanksgiving meal. Bob the turkey (pictured) was the headliner of this years Thanksgiving meal. At about 36 pounds, he was too big, even after slaughtering and feathering, to fit into one oven. We had to split him in two, cooking one “Moroccan” style and the other “American” style. In holiday tradition there were also breads, rolls, potatoes, veggies, sauces (including a delicious pomegranate “cranberry” sauce), pies, cookies, and relishes, and a big bowl of mac and cheese.