Updated November 21, 2023 at 9:46 AM ET
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in November 2022 and has been updated.
I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in 2002. I’d arrived in the United States in August of that year to start graduate school at the University of Missouri, Columbia. A few months later, I was invited to my first Thanksgiving dinner at a house shared by two Indians, one American, two New Zealanders and their sweet black Labrador, named Willow.
There was no turkey. The couple from New Zealand — the cooks in the house — were vegan, so they made tofurky and lots of vegetables. It was a delicious meal. We stuffed ourselves, shared stories, laughed a lot and eventually faded into a food coma.
I fell in love with the holiday right away. How could I not? I was so far from home and my family in India. Just a few months into my stay in America, I was struggling to understand American friendliness — everyone was quick to smile, say hello and joke around, but there were barriers to getting closer to people. Invitations to people’s homes — a deep part of the culture back home in India — weren’t common. There were invisible but strict boundaries to friendships that I was just starting to decipher.
I’d been missing my family terribly and was homesick. But over that first Thanksgiving meal, I forgot my homesickness. This coming together of a random group of people from different backgrounds and different corners of the globe, all away from their own families, momentarily cured my longings for home. I suddenly felt as if I belonged.
The food was different from any I’d ever had before. And yet, the experience felt familiar. It reminded me of all the religious festivals back home, because they too involve people gathering over food.
My first Thanksgiving reassured me that I was going to be all right. A shared meal seems to help erase differences and remind us of the things we have in common, like generosity, kindness, the need for love and…
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