Rupinder Gill's guide to surviving Thanksgiving as a first-generation Canadian of immigrant parents

by Rupinder Gill (@rkgill)

Recently, I came across this poem I wrote as a kid: 

Thanksgiving's coming soon you see.
I'll celebrate with my family. 
I can't wait until it's here.
It comes every once a year.
People are thankful for, 
food, freedom and much, much more.
And most people like to say,
Thanksgiving is a wonderful day.

I was 8 when I wrote that, hence the sappy sentiment and the total James Frey caliber lies. 
It was a mandatory assignment. If I didn't write the poem, I had to make a papier-mâché cornucopia. 
But really, I didn't know what else to write because in truth, Thanksgiving meant nothing to my family.

Keeping up with the Jones

Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in India and my parents missed picking up the handbook on how to throw a fabulous Canadian Thanksgiving bash after their immigration hearings. But as my sisters and I got older and more aware of the differences between our classmates families and us, we wanted to keep up with the Joneses. 

Each year, the factory my mom worked at would give every employee a Thanksgiving turkey in a gigantic cardboard box. The first year, my mom was just going to cook the turkey up tikka masala style until we showed her a picture in a magazine and begged her to put it in the oven. 

So she cooked the turkey for hours and when it was done, we took it out and ate it by dipping it in the traditional holiday garnish -- ketchup. My grandmother, a vegetarian, stared on in horror at the size of the bird and slowly ate her Aloo matar. 

What would Tony Danza cook?

In the coming years, we paid close attention to what Tony made on Who's The Boss and attempted to assemble a more traditional Thanksgiving. We purchased tinned cranberry sauce and ready-made stuffing. We steamed an assortment of vegetables. Then we sat down and ate it in absolute silence, as we ate every one of our meals. 

One year, intent on getting to Martha Stewart levels, we spent all night preparing turkey and all the trimmings. There was basting and glazing and mashing and pureeing and when we finally sat down to enjoy the fruits of our labour, our dad pulled up the bowl of gravy, inserted a spoon and started eating it like it was soup. 

A new tradition

After that, whenever my mom asked if we wanted to eat anything special over the Thanksgiving weekend, we pulled out a pizza delivery flier. Because holidays are about tradition, but not every families traditions are the same. And for that, I am thankful. As well as for saving the hours of preparation, preparing a meal that our parents neither wanted nor understood.