By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos
“The only time we close is for Thanksgiving.”
Many years ago, while traveling through a city I have long forgotten, I stopped for dinner at a Chinese restaurant where I overheard the owner chatting with a departing couple. “You’re not closed for New Year’s?” the man persisted. The owner’s heavy accent seemed to thicken with his emphasis. “We only close for Thanksgiving. It’s the only day.”
This time of year always brings back memories of that brief exchange. I never found out why Thanksgiving Day was the only special day for this family. Maybe the reason is as ordinary as the lack of Chinese takeout business that evening. But deep inside, I believe that Thanksgiving holds a special place in the hearts of immigrants. It did for my family after we arrived in America.
My father, a careful observer of American culture, thought Thanksgiving Day was one of its greatest inventions, a universal time to celebrate family and the goodness that life can bring. Other holidays with similar themes, like Christmas and Passover, are not celebrated by every American family, and patriotic days like the Fourth of July or Memorial Day require a historical perspective that new Americans absorb over time as they shed their previous alternatives. But Thanksgiving, he thought we can celebrate with sincerity and intensity the moment we step on American soil. It was to him The American Holiday, unique to America and uniquely American.
Turkey itself, however, took some cultural adjustments. Growing up in Uruguay, beef was king and cheap and as much a daily staple as bread. I am positive that the first time I ate turkey meat was on American soil; cranberries were so foreign to me and my family that I am still not sure of the proper Spanish translation. My mother was a very intuitive and creative cook, and if not gourmet, someone who delighted in making adjustments to recipes that would fit any preference or dietary restriction. Nevertheless, cooking a Turkey was so fraught with danger (imagine ruining a 20-dollar piece of meat!), that she did not dare to experiment, relying strictly on magazine recipes and neighbors. I suspect that is why along with the traditional Thanksgiving menu, she would always add some familiar dish from the old country, an island of familiarity in the middle of a bizarre and dangerous culinary ocean.
To immigrants, the holiday of Thanksgiving, with its imagery of Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread together in abundance and friendship, is the symbol of the opportunity offered by a new land, the promise of success through hard work, the eventual acceptance and respect between native and foreign peoples that immigrants pine for. I can imagine a happy if tired Chinese family at a Thanksgiving dinner long ago, boisterous conversation around the table substituting for the shouting of orders in a now silent commercial kitchen. In the middle of the family dinner table, I see two dishes within reach, an All-American turkey and stuffing centerpiece, a symbol of all that is fresh and full of promise, and beside it a communal bowl of Szechuan pork and rice, a symbol of what is comfortable and harkens to tradition. It is a happy setting with a bit of homesickness, with the cranberry sauce, forlorn in the corner, waiting for someone to try just a bit.
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The above is one of my earliest and favorite essays, and I enjoy sharing it this time of year. I think about this Chinese family often, as embracing the New World while retaining a tie to the Old is a universal immigrant experience and source of tension. But this year, I suspect the tension around the Thanksgiving dinner table for many immigrant families is not the American experience, but the prospect of someone around the table not being there come next year..
Most of the readers of this paper have immigrant forebears. Some ancestors were lucky to come when there were no immigration papers required and by definition arrived legally. But for some, the circumstances of their arrival are legally clouded by stories of faking one’s age, health or marital status, escaping a draconian draft or oppressive governments, or other destitute circumstances. They are stories now shared as examples of a family’s pluck, not shameful law-breaking.
President-elect Trump plans to activate the mass deportations of up to 10 million people who are here illegally, and while such a large number of people who do not have permission to live and work here is a real issue in this modern and mobile world, I hope a more humane and realistic plan will emerge to address this problem than the use of mass deportations. Past its use as a political rhetorical device, mass roundups, by their very nature, target large easily identifiable and vulnerable groups. What is more likely, dragnets of meat processing plants, harvest teams, or Chinatown neighborhoods, or searching for English-fluent Israeli-born engineers working at SpaceX?
I don’t pretend to know or even propose answers to these problems, but I do know that they are hard to solve, and hard problems are not amenable to simple proposals that are also fair and effective. Let us remember what history teaches us about ineffective but easy-to-propose “solutions” targeted at unprotected minorities. As we gather around the Thanksgiving table this year, I will pray that in the future, this essay will continue to culminate with a celebratory meal, and not with an ominous knock at the door.