Assignment 14 – Dilni Abeyrathne

Thanksgiving – a holiday filled with thanks, giving, and the aromatic scent of a holiday dinner: turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, the whole lot. Thanksgiving is certainly an interesting holiday, though it is not one my family and I celebrate.

Hailing from across the world as we are, our traditions are oceans away from those of Americans. As such, Thanksgiving, though we acknowledge the holiday, isn’t a special day for us. This Thanksgiving was as normal as it could get in our household. Our dinner was not the large and scrumptious dinner many people expect on a Thanksgiving evening. Instead, it consisted of rice and various curries. Yes, I know, it doesn’t sound supremely delicious or particularly noteworthy, but it is what it is…

For a very good reason.

My family, and Sri Lankan families in general, are very tight-knit. We tend to do nearly everything together and outlandish differences among family members are not common. As such, this is partly the reason we don’t celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving. Personally, I don’t find the idea of eating turkey very pleasing – in fact, it makes me quite miserable. I see turkeys as beautiful animals that don’t deserved to be killed for my enjoyment. In addition, I don’t like its taste. However, the previous reason prevails. If I see a turkey in a store or in the traditional dinner setting, my mind tends to wander into sad territory: I begin to ponder about the turkey and its feelings. The turkey must have had a family to go back to, or a life to live. These thoughts genuinely sadden me and as such, I cannot stand to eat such an animal. And herein is the reason we don’t celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving: if I am unwilling to partake in some activity, or if any of us are, my family will not do it. That includes eating turkey. If any member of my family doesn’t like consuming the animal, none of us will consume it.

Nevertheless, even without the famous dinner, my family still enjoys the day to simply be with each other, as we really don’t have any other family here, nearly all of them being thousands of miles away from us.