By Vishnu Bisram
Last Thursday, Americans of all stripes observed the traditional Thanksgiving Day with family reunions, church services, feasts, and charitable offerings. And Guyanese Americans and other Caribbean immigrants were in the thick of the celebrations giving it their own flavour with their ethnic foods, music, and drinks.
Since their arrival in the U.S. and establishing enclaves, they have experienced a higher standard of living than in their home countries and they have ploughed some of their earnings into the poorer sections of American society. They used the Thanksgiving holiday to donate to food pantries.
Many volunteered their time feeding the poor or even cooking meals for the poor. Some even donated foods and cash to shelters like the Bowery in downtown Manhattan.
Caribbean people, as indeed most Americans, view Thanksgiving as an occasion for family reunions and big dinners. Relatives normally take turn hosting dinner over the four-day period from Thursday to Sunday. Dinner normally includes the traditional baked or roasted turkey, pumpkin pie, sweet yams, corn, cranberry jelly, and salad (including sugar beets) with wine and other hard liquor. It is supplemented with traditional dishes including dhal puri, pachounie, phulourie, bara, fried rice, chowmein, and fried channa as snacks and their favourite drinks – mauby and sorrel for the children and Caribbean rum for the adults. For desert, there is black cake, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, and Indo-Caribbean throw in rasmalai, gulab jamoon, etc. And it is not unusual for them to substitute the turkey with curried duck, chicken, mutton, and goat, etc.
Thanksgiving Day Parade
Thanksgiving Day is usually celebrated with the largest parade in the nation on Fifth Avenue featuring all kinds of magnificent floats and balloons of cartoon characters and a host of Hollywood celebrities and sports stars. Most Guyanese were glued to the television sets broadcasting the parade.
By observing the festival, Guyanese and Caribbean people are participating in a mainstream American celebration in the same manner that they celebrate their own traditional festivals such as Phagwah, Deepavali, Eid, Qurbani, Christmas, etc.
They want to give thanks for the progress they have made in America, the land that has given them the opportunity to realise their dreams. They are helping to make America a better place to live, sharing their wealth and giving back to the society to which they owe their success.
