American Holidays: A Vietnamese Perspective

In response to my post about Christmas, a friend of mine from Vietnam sent me a paper she wrote about her first Thanksgiving after coming to this country. It's interesting to read how people from other countries view our holidays. And it's a perspective that is completely lost on people that have been here all their lives. It's a nice story. And I thank her for sharing with me and allowing me to share it with you. Enjoy.

My First Thanksgiving

In Vietnam, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. I never heard of Thanksgiving until I arrived in the United States! Then I didn't know what it was all about. What exactly is a "Turkey Day?" Why would these strange people have a holiday for an even stranger bird? And why would they eat the bird they are celebrating?

When I came to live with my brother in Texas, I learned what I thought was something new about the holiday- it is a day to celebrate football! The biggest event of the day was the football game that he and all his friends gathered to watch. Of course there was the traditional Thanksgiving food. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and of course fried rice, spring rolls, soup, and egg rolls. Of course I know that most American families don't have egg rolls and fried rice and those sorts of things, but we wanted to have some of our traditional food as well. We would all sit around the television and eat, and watch the football game.

Football was another thing that didn't make sense to me. Why were all those players fighting over one funny shaped ball? Why do they call it football when they don't usually kick it, only sometimes? They should call it handball, since they usually hold it in their hand. I told my friends that they should give each player a ball so they wouldn't have to fight over it, and of course they laughed at me. I didn't understand the rules at all. They kept stopping the action and starting again, instead of playing all the time like soccer. Why did they run with the ball sometimes, and throw it sometimes, and kick it sometimes? It seemed really silly to me.

I didn't really like this game of football. It was more fun to watch the parades on television, with the big balloons and all the bands and people and decorated vehicles. It is too bad that I couldn't go to see that in person! I wondered why they didn't have fireworks in the parade. When we have parades we always have fireworks in Vietnam! The balloons were nice, but they didn?t have the dragons and lions, and I missed that.

After the football game, everyone would go home, and we would eat more turkey. We had so much turkey that we couldn't eat it all before it spoiled. I felt really bad. Buddha teaches us not to waste food, so we shouldn't make more than we can eat, and we shouldn?t throw any away. One family had enough to feed the whole neighborhood, and it seemed very wasteful and greedy to me. Who would think that one family should have a whole bird as big as a small child for one meal? They couldn't possibly eat it all.

Now I have been here for several years. I have learned a little more about the culture and history of the United States, and I understand more about what Thanksgiving is about. It started as a celebration of the fall harvest, and having enough food after a long winter without enough to eat. It was a celebration of friendship between the Pilgrims and the Indians. It was a celebration of family. It was a celebration to give thanks to God for providing enough food, and for their lives.

I now know that football isn't part of Thanksgiving, or at least it wasn't. It seems to be a big part of the celebration for everyone I know, so I guess traditions change over time. My brother and all of his friends certainly seem to think it is the most important part of the holiday!

I still think that having so much food is wasteful, and it still bothers me if we cannot eat all of it and have to throw some away. It doesn?t seem right to do that. Throwing away food doesn?t seem like a very good way to celebrate having enough food after being hungry for a whole winter. The original holiday was full of meaning and feeling, but today it seems to be just another holiday.

No wonder I was confused. Nobody seems to follow the real meaning of Thanksgiving any longer. It is just another day that the stores can name a sale for, with no more meaning than any other day to most people. It seems that even most Americans don't really know what Thanksgiving is about, and that seems sad to me.