Thanksgiving Email from Dear Greenes

Hello Polo
It seems a long time since we had dinner together in Wuhan with you and Young and our friends from England. Yesterday we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, so I thought that I would tell you something about the traditions that we celebrate in our family. David of course would not celebrate this holiday if he were back in England. The English don't like to be reminded that they lost this country many centuries ago to some very independent thinkers. Over the centuries since that time, schoolchildren have been told the story about how the native Indians helped the early settlers to survive the difficult conditions in America. So the settlers celebrated the fact that they had food to survive the winter by inviting the Indians to a great feast at harvest time. The real purpose of this holiday is to remember and give thanks for all of the good fortune that we have each been given in our lives. I do not know if this story is really true about those settlers having a huge feast for the Indians, but it is true that many people today in the USA still celebrate on Thanksgiving day with a huge dinner. This is the one holiday in the year – even more than at Christmas – that family members will try to go 'home' for the holiday, wherever 'home' is to that person. In my family, when I was a child, everyone came to our home. I come from a large family (5 brothers and 1 sister) so our house was the biggest. Many of my aunts and uncles lived nearby so everyone came to our house for this celebration. My mother and my sister and I would spend all morning cooking, (and many of the previous days) and then everyone would arrive and spend most of the afternoon eating! The main feature of the dinner is a huge roast turkey (David is getting ready to carve this one!) along with other traditional foods. There are different traditions in different parts of the country for what food is eaten at the feast. Where I come from (near Chicago in the middle of the US) it is traditional to eat foods like potatoes (made several ways – mashed, baked and au gratin), Waldorf salad (made from chopped celery, walnuts, apples, pears and grapes), green vegetables like green beans and Brussels sprouts (these are in the containers I'm putting on the table), yellow vegetables like baked squash and sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, bread stuffing (cooked inside the turkey) and gravy (made from the juice from the turkey). The meal would not be complete without desserts and the most traditional dessert is pumpkin pie, served cold with huge spoonfuls of whipped cream. I use a recipe handed down from my Grandmother and this is my favorite food of the meal! Because of David's English background, we have added some English dishes to this feast, like roast parsnips and turnips with carrots and sherry trifle. Since this is usually a formal meal, an extra effort is made to make everything look beautiful – including the people! (David is wearing a red shirt he got in China and I've got on a favorite red plaid vest.) We have the meal in the dining room (David and I normally eat in the kitchen). The French doors open onto a large deck and in the daylight, we open the doors to let In the sun and fresh air (it is still not very cold in November in California). On holidays like this one, it is traditional to set the table with the best china, silverware and crystal glasses. In this picture, we are having the meal in the early evening, so we turned down the light from the chandelier and lit the candles, which made a lovely glow in the room. It is always a challenge for me to get all of the food on the table at the same time and ensure that it is all hot (I don't have my mother and sister to help me now!) This particular meal was one that turned out very well. I managed to get all of the food on the table while it was still hot and everything tasted delicious.
When I was a child, it was traditional for all of the men go off to watch a football game on TV after the meal was finished, while the women talked together while they washed the dishes and put away all of the leftover food. Fortunately David doesn't follow this tradition so he always helps clean up after the meal and then everyone can relax after the feast. Well, we usually all eat too much and then no one can move for several hours after the meal is finished!
Today, none of my extended family live in California so our Thanksgiving dinner is usually a small affair (compared to the 25 – 30 people that came to my house when I was a child!) This year it was just David and I (this picture is from last year when David's oldest son and some friends from England came to stay). I made all of the same traditional foods this year but the turkey was a lot smaller than the one in this picture which was about 44 kilos. We only had two places set at the table this year, but David did wear his red shirt from China. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but our dining room set is from China and each chair has a Chinese symbol inside a circle on the back of the chair. I think it means good fortune, which David and I certainly have had in our lives.
We have much to be thankful for; an abundance of good food, good health, and good friends like you. We have only been back in the US for a short time, and already we are looking forward to next year and the possibly of coming back to China for the September programme at HUST. We have such wonderful memories from the time we spent there this year and the pleasure of seeing you again. We hope that we can see Marina on our next trip. I'm taking Mandarin classes so perhaps we will be better able to talk with each other. We are very thankful we could spend time with you again and we consider you a very special friend. So on this Thanksgiving holiday, please accept our warmest thanks for your friendship and our best wishes for your continued health, happiness and success.
Yours with deepest affection
Rosemary and David.