Living here in London Thanksgiving is not a holiday that is celebrated. Now it isn’t totally ignored either. The people here are aware of Thanksgivng in fact the retail world here has tried to create a Black Friday here like the one we have in the States. It’s kind of weird going around the town and seeing a bunch of Black Friday sale signs and having no Thanksgiving associated with it. So far the rush here to go out shopping is nowhere near the frenzied levels we achieve in America. I think one of the main problems with Black Friday sales here is that most people don’t have the day off like they do in the States. The simple fact is you can’t go shopping if you are at work.
In our house two of the four people living there are American so it was decided that we would have our own little Thanksgiving. It wasn’t really because Joan or I really felt the need to celebrate it rather we just thought it would be fun also Priya and Joan wanted to do some cooking. We decided to have it on Saturday rather than Thursday because no one had Thursday or Friday off so we didn’t really have the time or energy to try and do it on those days.
Of the four people in the house I am the only one who doesn’t do any significant amount of cooking. Priya’s father, Kan, does a lot of cooking. He specializes in Indian food constantly providing us with delicious curries. Joan and Priya like to experiment a bit more and they cook and bake all different kinds of food. Given all the talent for cooking in this house Thanksgiving seemed like a natural things to do. After some serious deliberation about what to make for the meal they decided to make a Mexican meal rather than the more traditional American meal of Turkey with all the trimmings. I, of course, will never say no to a homemade Mexican meal so I was excited by the decision. I didn’t need turkey or anything like that to feel like it was Thanksgiving just hanging out with family was enough for me.
Saturday came and Joan and Priya spent much of the day cooking. Kan spent time working on the living room. It’s being repainted, rewired and basically just redone. I spent most of the day upstairs cleaning the bathroom and our bedroom and such. Priya’s brother and his wife were coming to dinner so cleaning the bathroom was important. Don’t get me wrong the bathroom wasn’t disgusting it gets wiped down fairly regularly but still it needed a good scrubbing so that’s where I came in. I really hate scrubbing the bathroom because by the time I’m done I’m hot and sweaty and all I want to do is take a shower but I don’t want to get in the shower and defile my work. A clean bathroom just doesn’t last very long.
Priya’s brother and sister-in-law showed up around five ready for the meal. Priya’s sister-in-law, Pat, is from Brazil and she brought black beans and salsa both of which were delicious. Joan created some salsa of her own, guacamole and quesadillas. Priya made green chili chicken, rice and a pineapple upside down cake.
As the meal was being prepared Kan cleverly noted how international our Thanksgiving was going to be. We were celebrating an American holiday with Mexican food at an Indian’s house in London. The guest list included a Brazilian (Pat), a Japanese American (Joan), three Indians (they are ethnically Indian not nationally. Kan grew up in Kenya while Priya and her brother were born and raised here in the UK ) and myself.
The meal was great and the conversations were fun. During dinner Priya’s iPhone was softly playing music in the background and at one point an instrumental song came on being done by a full orchestra, which caught my attention. The music sounded very familiar to me but I couldn’t place it. She then told me that it was the theme music to the character Guile in Street Fighter. Someone had actually decided to take all the video game music from Street Fighter and use an orchestra to play it. The idea seems silly but it really was quite cool. Anyway this discovery led to a long conversation about video games, cartoons and general activities all of us did as children. Joan found this conversation pretty interesting because she did not have children nor did she watch TV so she didn’t know any of the cartoons, games or music we were talking about. The fact is Joan got rid of her last TV in 1971 and didn’t live in a house with a television again until she moved here to London. Nor did she listen to much music so she has this sort of 30 year gap of knowledge concerning TV, music and movies. Of course she has one of the most interesting lives anyone can imagine so I don’t think she needs to worry about what she “missed”.
The great thing about talking about Street Fighter was that it went along well with our international theme in that each character is from a different country. We laughed as we went through all the players and where they were from and how those players made our countries look. We got to tell Joan about E. Honda who is the sumo wrestler from Japan. He can launch himself like a bullet and move his hand very quickly allowing him to strike you numerous times very fast. Then there’s Dhalsim the Hindi Yogi who can stretch his arms/legs extremely far out and spit fire. Then we just couldn’t stop laughing as Pat described how much she didn’t like Blanka, the Brazilian character who was basically just a green monster. America was represented by Guile, an air force member and Ken a karate guy. The whole conversation made me wish we had a good old Super Nintendo with Street Fight 2 along with some other games (Mario Kart) to play.
The night went on with good food and good conversation and then we found ourselves in front of the TV. During dinner one of the things that had come up was the show Honey Boo-boo. For those that don’t know it is a show based on this weird little girl and her family. They live somewhere in the American south. She was “discovered” on the show Toddlers and Tiaras. Now Priya and I had watched an episode recently because it was playing On-Demand and we were bored. It was the Thanksgiving episode so we thought it might be fun. It was filled with disgusting and weird things that just make you shake your head. During dinner we found out that Pat was a huge fan of that show. So after we all ended up in front of the TV it wasn’t long before we were playing Honey Boo Boo for everyone. It really isn’t a show I could follow on a regular basis but it is just so odd it’s worth watching once. It’s funny because in America I know people from the South who get embarrassed by these people and don’t want people to think that all Southerners are like this family. Now I admit if I was watching this show in America I would simply associate this family with the South and feel no connection to them. But here in Britain one quickly becomes embarrassed of this family because they are American and you realize that many people who watch the show here just end up associating this family with all Americans. It’s funny how one’s location can affect one’s views about other people, ideas and events.
So that was our family Thanksgiving here in London. It was a great time with almost nothing I associate with a traditional Thanksgiving in the State be that food, events (watching Honey Boo-Boo rather than football) or even conversation. I look forward to see how next year goes assuming we are all still around here in London.
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