Thanksgiving is an all-American celebration – but that doesn’t mean we can’t steal some of their ideas

No rational person ever turned down an excuse to celebrate. Chinese New Year, Diwali, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Greek Easter – if you feel in the mood for a party, there’s always someone else’s good reason to raise the roof.

American Thanksgiving is probably the most all-embracing festivity. British wiseguys would say it was a thoroughly British bacchanal. After all, until the war of Independence the original settlers were British subjects. Anyway, there’s never a shortage of things to give thanks for - no overdraft this month, an amazing bargain with a Versace label, and the man/woman of your dreams you met only last night.

Ingredients for the commemoration feast are almost the same as Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, potatoes. American additions come in the cranberry sauce, corn pudding, and – the dish that has non-Americans shooting their eyebrows into their scalps – sweet potato casserole with melted marshmallow topping. Who can explain? The food is the same, year in year out, because no change is what tradition is all about. Though food historian Jan Longone says it is not certain that turkey was part of the First Feast. ‘We know wild ducks were, we think lobster was because it was so ubiquitous at the time.’

Tradition has it that as the pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts, brought in their first harvest, neighbourly Indians emerged from the forest bearing gifts of their own traditional foods to celebrate: the wild turkey (or duck, or lobster), ears of corn and pumpkin. There is no historical record to back this up, but it doesn’t stop tiny tots at primary schools all over the country from dressing up in Indian costumes and black paper Puritan hats with big buckles and, in front of gulping parents, re-enacting the occasion.

Though Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, with Friday another day off, this date was only set by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939. The first pioneers did not celebrate their good harvests for several years and then probably some time in early October. In 1827, Mrs Sarah Josepha Hale started lobbying for a national Thanksgiving holiday – an observance which was finally established with his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.

Thanksgiving is a significant feast in the American calendar. If the harvest had not been successful, it is debatable whether the first settlers could have survived. Many of them, in different colonies along the eastern seaboard,
did not.

It’s an occasion for getting together with family and friends. People travel for miles – in the US this can mean thousands – to join the feast, which is usually eaten late afternoon. Everyone has their own rituals, but most of them involve some kind of sport. Once the turkey has been crammed into the oven, teams pile outside to beat each other at baseball, football or basketball, exertions essential to the enjoyment of the food.

Like Christmas, it’s a manageable meal. Turkey can be made to stretch to an almost infinite number of people. Cooks are pragmatic about how much time they want to spend in the kitchen. So tins come into their own: tinned sweet potatoes, tinned sweet corn with tinned evaporated milk, and even tinned cranberries which emerge in a jellied roll for mashing down into a relish.

The Thanksgiving turkey, of course, is the centre of attention, with family members vying from breakfast onwards to promote their favourite stuffing. Traditionally, the turkey comes with mashed, not roast, potato. This is not the occasion for contemporary renditions with garlic and lumps. Thanksgiving mashed potato is smooth and silky, no thicker than a dense custard; the gravy should be brown, shiny and comforting, a reminder of school dinners.

Then, of course, there is Pumpkin Pie, without which no Thanksgiving feast could take place.

What can one say? Pumpkin Pie is made from pumpkin pulp, eggs, evaporated milk, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger. Take away the spices, and basically what you have is a rather dreary amber-coloured quiche. The Indians may have given the Pilgrims the pumpkin in order to get rid of it. But there is always Apple Pie on offer, or delectable Pecan Pie – a confection of beaten eggs, sugar, corn syrup, melted butter and vanilla poured over chopped nuts in a pastry case.

And for this, and every other warm and friendly feast, we all give thanks.

Recipes

Classic Pumpkin Pie

Pecan Pie