One Thanksgiving, a number of years ago, I found myself in a foreign country where this holiday was unknown and uncelebrated. We were able to scrounge up a turkey and luckily an American neighbor was able to share some canned cranberry sauce, as cranberries were as foreign to this Mediterranean country as a pilgrim. The designated Thursday dawned bright and sunny, and outside our windows, as the turkey cooked away, the life of the city teamed around us as usual, unaware that an American holiday was unfolding behind those very windows.
The children made colored turkey name cards for the table as I made the mashed potatoes, stuffing and all the other accoutrements of this celebratory meal. The oldest daughter was in first grade, so she was able to read our traditional Thanksgiving Psalm, her face solemn with the responsibility.
I discovered that Thanksgiving, that rather than decrease the meaning of the holiday as hardly anyone else was celebrating it, my gratitude was, in fact, increased. I was spared the stores filled with Thanksgiving merchandise, the advertisements on TV showing families that never exist in real life, and even the football games that consumed people in their post-dinner stupor. Instead, the concentration was completely on all that we had to be grateful for with no commercial clutter.
Because the world outside was unaware of the significance of this day, I realized I could extend my thanks to those in this foreign country who had been kind to me, a stranger. There was the cheerful clerk at the bakery with delicious flakey croissant, the concierge of our building, the neighbors who gave my daughter a ride to school every day in a car driven by a liveried driver no less. No matter who or where or what nationality we could all be included in an enlarged sense of thanksgiving.