Growing Up With Thanksgiving

On navigating Thanksgiving break with family when both you and your family have changed

By: David Ma

The table is laden with a feast fit for a king. The centerpiece is a golden-brown turkey, which lays flanked by its entourage: gravy and stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie. But there are others too, foreigners encroaching upon this traditional cornucopia.

When I learned about Thanksgiving in school, I learned about pilgrims and Native Americans, charity and peace, corn and the harvest. These legends created a dominant mythos about the holiday, one that persists to the present day. It’s common knowledge that these tales whitewashed much of the truth, from its food to the traditions. But while one could debate what the colonists ate back in the day, anyone could tell you that many of the dishes arrayed across our table existed in no rendition of history.

After all, I sincerely doubt that any Puritans sank their teeth into delicately folded dumplings or that any early settlers crowded around a campfire with a bowl of peanut noodles. These additions to the potluck are decidedly un-American, representatives of a different hemisphere altogether.

One might argue that un-American is the wrong word. An idealist would likely claim that these Thanksgiving anatopisms are in fact quintessentially American, that they are the purest distillation of the American dream. That immigrants from an ocean away can find their home in the land of the free, celebrating a tradition that their ancestors had no part in building. There is, of course, truth in this sentiment. Decades ago, my mother and father left China in search of something tangential to these ideals, and most would argue that they’ve found a good life—however they’d define it—in the land of Christopher Columbus.

I have almost no extended family in the US. My parents were the only ones from their respective families to immigrate here, and the only blood relations I’ve known for much of my life were my parents and my sister. This fact presented a slight conundrum when it came to the spirit of Thanksgiving. While my fellow students assembled for an annual family gathering, we had no such option. 

That's not to say that Thanksgiving must be celebrated with family. Friendsgiving is a more than common occurrence amongst college students. But for children especially, Thanksgiving family reunions are about as American as apple pie and baseball. 

Lacking this option, like many immigrants, my parents adapted. They found a circle of other Chinese immigrant families with children around our age, and collectively we had our own Thanksgiving celebrations. Amongst members of our Chinese diaspora, my parents were able to escape the language barrier that follows them everywhere they go.

There is merit to the idea that “blood is thicker than water.” Treating it as indisputable fact offers its own issues, but it is no doubt true that simply being family creates a connection ipso facto. Despite all the differences that can arise between relatives, those relatives will still convene for the sole fact that they share a common bloodline. And while I do believe that friendships can be forged for life, they often prove to be more fragile. 

The passing years have caused our little suburban circle to lose its children. We are slowly but unavoidably becoming adults, dispersing across all corners of the US as we pursue our respective professions. When I go home for Thanksgiving, the “family” that we once celebrated the holiday with will be hollowed out. Without us children as an impetus to gather, and especially given the pandemic, there may soon be no annual gathering at all.

But regardless of whether or not we have a gathering within our community, the core of our family—the nuclear family that is pretty much the only blood that I have known for my entire childhood—will remain, at least for one more Thanksgiving. With my sister having graduated last year and me graduating this coming spring, there is no guarantee that our unbroken streak of sharing this yearly dinner will survive indefinitely. All of us would surely hope for it to continue, but it does seem that life has a funny way of causing roads to diverge. Such wistfulness is for another time, though; this year will be the same as the twenty-one that came before it.

At times, it's difficult to find common ground with my parents. That's not to say that our conversations go nowhere; Mom is always happy to hear updates about my life. But I don't think that my parents really know or understand my hobbies; it's difficult to carry on a conversation about sports, movies, or much of my generation's culture. I don't think that this is unique to me; a generational gap exists between every generation in every corner of the world. But I do think that our learned experiences have created a divide heightened by the intersection of our identities. Even beyond our differences in age, I could never truly understand their Chinese-ness and they cannot know what it means to grow up in America. 

It's also a divide that only seems to deepen. Politically, socially, religiously, etc., our views have diverged on a significant number of issues. As Novembers come and go, each new year finds us further changed. This is only natural. When I was a child, as with most other children, I essentially parroted the beliefs of my parents. As I grew up, I began to form my own judgments about the world.

College has a way of accelerating this opinion-forming process. For fear of sounding like a college marketing pamphlet, large universities like the U expose you to a microcosm of the world. In this case, it was a world significantly different from the suburb that I grew up in. Even with my childhood home less than half an hour from the U, college afforded me the freedom to learn and have formative experiences in a new and independent environment.

How, then, ought I reconcile these differences? I have tried in the past to sway my parents to my points of view, leveraging what rhetorical skills I might have, and have been met with a very low success rate. The answer is incredibly trite, and I have no doubt that you already know it, but I think there is value in writing it nonetheless.

In colloquial terms, we can agree to disagree. There are some ways that my parents and I differ and will continue to differ. I ought to put forth my best effort to influence change when possible, but I also ought to accept that sometimes I will fail to do so.. Most importantly, I ought not allow these differences to diminish the other constants of our family, those aspects that exist and will continue to exist even as I enter fully into adulthood.

I’m not trivially dismissing our differences. I’ve heard my parents express certain views that I vehemently disagree with, and the majority of the tears that I’ve shed in past years have probably been in arguments with them. But few relationships are perfect, and although Thanksgiving is by definition centered around the giving of thanks, there are certain thanks that I rarely reflect upon.

Thanks for those Thanksgiving gatherings of my childhood, for example. Despite the foreignness of the holiday, despite being isolated from their homeland, my mom and dad tried to give us an “American” childhood in addition to instilling upon us the traditions of our heritage. In the absence of blood relations, they sought to find my sister and me like-minded peers so that we would not feel isolated in one of the whitest suburbs of Minnesota. They came to a strange land, one where they celebrate Thanksgivings and Chinese New Years without any family, largely to find my sister and me the best possible conditions for success.

My parents, and my dad especially, are not particularly open about their emotions or expressing vulnerability. This is another byproduct of our generational gap, an attitude typical of traditional Chinese men. But despite my parents' somewhat reticent nature, it is all too clear that they truly do want the best for my sister and me. Despite all our disagreements, arguments, and irritating exchanges, I have no doubt that they care for us.

So yes—even as time changes all of us, some things stay constant—things that should not be forgotten.