Outside of expat communities, the idea of celebrating a traditional US Thanksgiving day, meal, ritual… nobody knows what you are talking about. No surprise. You can definitely search out an expat scene cooking up dry roasted turkeys with bloating bread stuffing gratefully drenched in an overly floured lumpy gravy. It’s out there. But the Brazilians will just look at you with a blank stare.
On the flip side, I presume, folks in the US are not stepping out to celebrate Afro-Brazilian consciousness day (as one example). Brazilian communities in the US surely gather to celebrate Dia da Independêntia (while Americans have no clue what is going on).
We live here. We don’t live in the US. Things are different.
That said, I have some killer pumpkin bread just coming out of the oven.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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5 comments:
Ditto
I've been in London for 17 Thanksgivings now. I've only done the "turkey with all the trimmings" once, as my friends here wanted a traditional US Thanksgiving. It was a great hit, but I was exhausted. So, never again.
That being said, I baked a Bourbon Squash Pie this afternoon, and it was yummy.
Happy Thanksgiving, Jim and Luiz!
-Chris
www.floridaguyinbrazil.com
MMM!
We had a Thanksgiving celebration last Saturday. My MIL studied and forwarded to everyone the story of Thanksgiving and our friend came over and went on to describe the history of Thanksgiving and its traditions (better than any history teacher I've had) to everyone before they ate the green bean casserole that I made from scratch, including the fried onions(to be re-created soon with pics for Danielle's blog). I was pleasantly surprised by people getting into it so thoroughly and it turning out so well (note: no pumpkin pie, omitted sweet potato casserole due to R$15 marshmallows, never got my imported craanberry and my Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole turned out awful with my local substitutions BUT it was all good!)
Jim, Im used to Toronto where the city celebrates every holiday from Ramadan, to Hannukah to Brazilian Independence Day.
I don't expect others to be super excited about Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, or even Christmas (which comparatively they are not) but I also ask them for the respect to want to celebrate holidays that are very special to me, despite the fact that I live here.
Some of my students gave me looks and straight up asked "why? Why would you want to do Thanksgiving? Brazil doesn't celebrate it..."
Uh, I dunno. Why would you want to celebrate Carnaval while living in a non-Carnaval country? Because it's important to you, that's why!
That being said, I'm really happy to be going home for Christmas this year because it's just not the same here. I have never been able to get into Christmas with 40 degree weather and palm trees!!! :)
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