We celebrated Thanksgiving this past Thursday like so many other Americans. It’s our fourth Thanksgiving in Germany. Our first was in 2017, when we used our Thanksgiving break to travel to Potsdam to meet my husband’s future boss and colleagues, and scope out housing. That year, we had Thanksgiving dinner in an Indian restaurant down the street from the mini-apartment where we were staying. It remains our go-to restaurant for Indian delivery, even when we eventually settled in an apartment a bit to far to go and eat in person there regularly (their 10min drive for delivery is a 45min walk for us).
In both 2018 and 2019 I took off work for Thanksgiving (now that I’m a German employee, this is not a holiday for me!) to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner which we shared with friends. The only difference from 2018 to 2019 was the addition of slightly better seating for our guests.
This year with the pandemic we could not invite anybody over. Our part (and most) of Germany is under a strict 10 people or less from no more than two households rule. And with cases still high, we wouldn’t want to put our friends at risk anyway. So this year, as for so many other families, it was just our little household and no guests. But we still felt it was important for us to celebrate. It’s been a rough year, but we do have things to be thankful for. First of all, there is the food! And Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the American version of the harvest festivals so many countries and cultures celebrate around the globe. So, you have to celebrate the food.
It’s hard not knowing when things will be safe and settled enough to make relocating back to the US feasible. We miss our families and the knowledge that we can’t visit makes this all the harder. But there are the simple basics to be thankful for. We are currently safe, with a roof over our heads, still employed, and not worried about our next meal. And 2020 has brought a few good things as well. My husband has seen some of his academic papers enter the final stages before publication. My job is going well, and I’m doing some cool stuff with my fiber hobby. And our course, we now have Pippin. The joy he has added to our family for all of us (Sylvia included) has been a daily bright spot. Whenever we look at our calendar and think “we were going to be home by August…” we can remind ourselves that if things had gone according to that plan, we wouldn’t have our little fluffy mischief maker.
So, just like in the past two years, I took off Thanksgiving from work, and prepared our Thanksgiving meal:
Yup, that’s about enough food to feed us dinner for a week. Nope, we will not get sick of eating it. Yes, those are turkeys – the grocery store only had “baby” turkeys this year, and two still came in at a modest 8.36lbs (2.8k). One of the great things about doing Thanksgiving just for two (or your non-American friends) is that you can just make what YOU like best, without worrying that you’re skipping somebody’s favorite dish. So, we had bread stuffing, cranberry chutney, mashed sweet potatoes, and green beans. And, of course, pumpkin (ok ok Hokkaido squash) pie for dessert. I made gravy as well to go with the turkey.
Sylvia, by the way, has totally figured out what a roasting bird means – treats. She’ll show up just as she hears me carving it. Pippin, being less interested in patient observation, has not figured this out. So I have to call him into the kitchen for his treat or Sylvia will get it all. They were both good kitties and did not try to steal from our meals while we ate. They get the system – I pay them off in advance, and they leave us alone while we eat.
We had an early 5pm meal, followed by some Zoom calls with the family to wrap up the day. This is also something to be thankful for. Even though we couldn’t celebrate with our families in person, modern technology has made it easier to maintain connections, and still ear loved voices and see familiar faces.