While the Thanksgiving Day holiday is celebrated primarily by Americans and Canadians, it has spilled over into other countries and societies and I believe this has happened due to the prolonged contact with those countries. I can't be sure that's exactly the reason why other cultures celebrate Thanksgiving Day — I consider it an educated guess. Regardless, what started out as a religious holiday is now considered a secular holiday as well.

The Thanksgiving Day Turkey

The original turkey for Thanksgiving Day was actually any bird that could be hunted and eaten. I'm referring to, of course, the first Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth Plantation (before that part of the now current American continent became part of the US) in 1621.

Somewhere along our historical path, the turkey came to prominence as the fowl of choice for eating on Thanksgiving Day (and Christmas Day as well). I don't know about other societies, but most Americans will try to find the biggest turkey they can cook in a conventional oven.

In 2006, I and my wife looked for a large turkey for our Thanksgiving Day dinner. I don't know if turkeys get very big in the Philippines because the largest turkey we could find was barely larger than a leghorn chicken. It didn't take long to cook and the three of us (me, my wife and my son) consumed everything but the bones. Everything I consider edible, that is.

Other Fixings

I grew up in a large family and our Thanksgiving Day meals were always more than enough to feed 11 or more people at once. Even when the family grew (in-laws) to more than double that size, there was always enough and usually a lot of leftovers.

Two huge turkeys were usually the center of attention but we had pumpkin and pecan pies, sweet potatoes and yams (there's a difference), cranberry sauce, cornbread, hams, fruit salad and all kinds of things I can't seem to remember right now, with huge helpings of giblet gravy to go on top of whatever it went on top of along with the stuffing from the turkeys.

As we got older (and time approached closer to the current day), some of the Thanksgiving Day items could be bought already prepared from local markets (like pies). The best dishes, however, were always homemade.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

This year, 2009, will be the first year since 2006 in which I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving Day. My wife was in the US for the other two but she'll be here for this one.

Strange as it may seem, my wife is the one who insisted on having a Thanksgiving Day dinner in 2006 and she insists on having one this year. It was only strange to me, considering my wife is Filipino, until I realized one glaring fact I overlooked until just a few days ago. My wife moved to the US when she was only 23 and she's now 48, which means she has spent more time living in the US than she has in the Philippines. Perhaps you could consider her a Filipino-American in the truest meaning of the term since she acts more American than I do.

She's due to arrive on November 16th (the ticket is already paid for). I've taken a gander at some of the turkeys for sale in a couple of places, but the offerings have been scarce (and kind of small). I'm hoping we can spend some quality time together while looking for some decent sized turkeys. I really don't want to be cooking two turkeys when I should be able to feed the three of us with just one.

Some of the other fixings aren't a problem for us. Sweet potatoes and yams are in abundant supply here. Pumpkins are a different story. We'll have to find some canned pumpkin and make our own pies. Fruit salad, stuffing, cranberry sauce and other items aren't much of problem either. I must say, however, that I can do without the cranberry sauce since I never liked it much in the first place. In the end, I guess, it depends on how much money we're willing to spend on our Thanksgiving Day dinner.

Sharing the Wealth

One of the unfortunate side effects of cooking a big Thanksgiving Day dinner will be that all of my in-laws will come out of the woodwork, looking for a piece of the action. I know this to be true because it has happened with lesser events. Whenever my wife cooked her famous chicken enchiladas, beef tostadas, American-style spaghetti (don't ask about the difference), and other foods in which the delicious odors tended to waft over our compound, we had difficulty keeping people away.

The way they behave, you would think my in-laws have never eaten real food before. I don't mind sharing as long as we remember to set aside enough for ourselves to make the whole holiday ordeal worthwhile. The only part that irritates me is when I know they've already eaten and I haven't and they're more than willing to take more than their fair share. It just isn't going to happen that way this year or in other words, it'll happen over my dead body. I'm hungry for some turkey and nobody better get in my way and that's all I'm going to say about that.

I'm actually looking forward to Thanksgiving Day this year and if I appear to disappear for a couple of days, it will simply be because I'm recuperating from over indulgence. Americans celebrate it on the 4th Thursday of November (which happens to fall on the same day as my birthday every so often, but not again until 2013) and this year will be two days before my 49th birthday, which I don't intend to celebrate unless you count celebrating with leftovers. That is, if there ARE any leftovers. (Maybe I can find a way to hide some turkey for some leftover turkey sandwiches. No? Well, it's a thought.)

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