Home is where the holidays are

Away from home, in London as we are, we celebrated some of Americans' favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Missing our family members, we imported different groups for these holidays. Aunt Mawti, Laura ("Auntie Biscuit"), and Erica for Thanksgiving. Nainai, Gugu, and Kevin for Christmas. Many adventures away from home ensued.

To Thanksgiving

The term "citizen of the world" is bullshit. Holidays easily prove this true. Away from your home country, when a holiday arises that you would have spent at home with friends and family, you will pine to celebrate like them, with wistful thoughts of home. The Thanksgiving holiday for U.S. people has very specific connotations -- celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, with visions of a well-defined (and probably mythical) pilgrim group, cornucopias, turkeys, stuffings, gravies, sweet and savory pies, etc. According to Wikipedia, Thanksgiving is celebrated a few other places but not by the majority of the world. In another land during Thanksgiving, all Americans would note how little holiday is observed, and American minds always wander to moms, grandmas, time-honed gravy-making skills, and turkeys made from hand tracings.

The FD Linge Flat red'up for Thanksgiving.

Bob, gettin' red'up for Thanksgiving.

Aunt Mawti was the unquestioned Thanksgiving kitchen master. Having learned the classic Thanksgiving recipes from her own mother, who learned it from her own mother, AM's daughters were observing, learning and throwing barbs of snarky comments at her. Christine and I weeks before had acquired the specialty kitchen apparatuses, aka turkey baster etc, necessary for cooking this specialty meal. The end-result was deliciousness that would remind you of all of the best Thanksgivings you could remember.

 



Thanksgiving, it is well known, is really all about the food, and none of us are as thankful as we should be, or as thankful as pilgrims who would have starved were not for friendly natives. It's not that easy to just go and buy a turkey in another country on demand. While researching our London options for consumer whole turkey procurement, I learned that it is actually easy to buy a turkey in the U.K., starting in early December, because it is a traditional English Christmas food. Since Thanksgiving is a week before that, eventually my only option was to buy from a shop specializing in just poultry, London's last poulterer in fact.

It was interesting to visit Liverpool Street Chickens. In my internet research, I learned that its East London environs were formerly full of Jewish market sellers, but now the neighborhood is known for the cleaned-up Spitalfield Markets, aka bourgie prepared food market, and the curry houses on Brick Lane, home to a thriving Bangladeshi community that is slowly getting pushed out by hipsters, gentrifiers, and their expensive breakfast cereal shops. I pre-ordered my turkey several weeks early and went to pick it up on Thanksgiving morning. That particular Thursday was definitely not a holiday in the U.K. Very much a workday, I took a conference call from the nearby Starbucks.

S. Cole, London's last poulterer, established 1895. You can see on this street, the food markets have given way to a more current modernity. Thankfully these guys have held on -- we will buy all future turkeys from them.

Bob preparing for the holiday with a magnum of Bollinger. Trying to maintain a bit of Englishness for the holiday, we selected Patty and Eddie's favorite Champagne, as frequently referenced in Absolutely Fabulous, known lovingly as Bolly.

Being temporary in London, we don't intend to invest in specialized glassware.

Other than the day itself, Chris, Bob, cousins, Aunt, and I had all sorts of adventures and fun in southern England. We dined on the finest mid and upper-mid-range cuisines from destinations exotic such as England, Ethiopia, Mumbai, and Vietnam. We also drove a car to Stonehenge. The car ride was at times a bit like being in an unsecured roller coaster, just trying to stay in your lane while sideswiping other cars and pedestrians as little as possible. Mind you, the suburbs of London are very old and you don't find the modern throughways that you would in, say, suburban Iowa. Streets are narrow. Bridges are old and sometimes seemingly ill-equipped for their purported task. Drivers are impatient. And nothing is marked in a way that would help you to drive or even reach your destination -- how did London drivers manage before mobile GPS? Never mind that you're driving a stick-shift minivan on the wrong side of the road with a mysteriously tricky reverse gear (usually we just put it in neutral and rolled backwards in lieu of actually finding the official reverse gear).

Bob's first visit to Stonehenge. We also visited Hampton Court, which is plopped into the souther London suburbs. Heading home to Islington in north London meant driving literally all the way across London.

To Christmas

Bob's nainai spent three weeks with us in London, and his gugu spent five days. We had fun, and there was no parenticide or infanticide but several veiled threats.

It doesn't snow a lot or often in London, but it did snow a few times in the lead up to Christmas.

Bob's Aunt Marwi got him an early Christmas present: a Brio train set. It would later be expanded by his nainai.

Just as we did for Thanksgiving, we tried to recreate in London our historic U.S. holiday experience. I was worried it would be difficult to get a Christmas tree in London. Someone at work soothed my fears before the holiday: he said, in a very English way, it is "nigh on compulsory to have a tree at Christmas." We ordered one of the more expensive trees, but it looked a bit scraggly compared to what we would buy in Cedar Rapids.

In anticipation of this special consumer holiday, we had a small family reunion, having the (almost ostentatious) tea in the luxurious Cafe Royal. (If you want to feel fancy English in London, go here; they cater to that desire.) Several Champagnes later, we stumbled into Regent Street, where we would make a few trips over the course of weeks to shop for toys at Hamley's, which is kind of like five Toys-R-Us on top of each other, but in the center of London (and also not out of business). 

Regent Street, where you can find all of your famous upper-middle-class chain stores, lit for Christmas with ghostly looking angels. Nainai showed amazing restraint in buying Bobby Christmas presents: that made the presents he received that much more special.

Big screen time at Piccadilly Circus

Mum felt a lot of pressure in charge of the Christmas holiday menu for her in-laws. She prepared weeks for the meal, and while she was very stressed while cooking, we all reaped the reward of an excellent meal.

Christmas is much more an international holiday than Thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving is all about the food, not everyone in all countries likes to eat pumpkin pie, turkey and gravy. If Christmas is all about buying the stuff you want or getting others to buy it for you, then you can see why it's such a popular holiday in China, the U.K., the list of countries is just so long. From my English employers, I received many work emails during Thanksgiving but none during Christmas. And while we tried to observe local traditions, it is impossible to forget the traditions from your home country. I hate nationalism, or pride in one's country, but you also can't help define some of your identity by that place. This partly American family, with its imported American relatives, had a great time celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving in London. Next year, to Cedar Rapids.

PRESENTS! Training up our little consumer, Christmas morning. It may not be immediately obvious, but that ball he is so fondly holding is a dryer ball (intended to reduce wrinkles and static in drying laundry) that Mum received from Nainai.

With Nainai we visited a Winnie the Pooh exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum told the history of the characters, which started out as a magazine serial but then purchased by Disney and made into the cartoons with the voices we know today. There were also some interactive exhibits, such as this bridge with a projected stream, that Bob liked. Kids were going nuts all throughout the exhibit, so Bob was in good company.