I should have known it was going to be a disaster the moment I saw the Christmas decorations.
It was Thanksgiving morning and I had just arrived at my parents’ house in Sligo from Dublin. I walked through the back door and into the living room where, to my horror, I was met by a fully decorated Christmas tree, a porcelain nativity set, stockings and a huddle of stoney-faced Santas on a garland-lined book shelf.
“What’s happening?” I asked, spinning around to my mother.
“Since most of the family is coming over for dinner, I thought we’d make this something of a Christmas party as well,” she said, adding the finishing touches to the massive dinner table she set up especially.
“But it’s Thanksgiving,” I said.
Thanksgiving is always the last Thursday of November, the start of a rare long weekend for Americans. The three days after are for digging out Christmas lights, nutcrackers and the felt-and-superglue ornaments you made when you were six. Decking any halls before Thanksgiving is just madness.
But my mother is Irish. And there’s a cynical child inside me that swears she has it in for Thanksgiving. After living in the United States for 29 years, in which time she married a New Yorker and raised three kids in Texas, she moved back to Sligo - with the four Americans in tow.
This was to be our sixth Thanksgiving in Ireland and the first for many of our Irish relations.
I moved into the kitchen to help my dad. Every year, he does the turkey and stuffing. I do the green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole. The cranberry sauce comes from a jar.
“Why is there cake on the counter?” I asked my dad who was elbow deep in turkey. There isn’t supposed to be cake: cake is for Christmas, pecan pie and pumpkin pie are for Thanksgiving.
“Your mother got that for your grandmother. It’s her birthday,” he said, without the slightest bit of concern.
“Actually her birthday is in a couple of weeks,” my mother said, walking into the kitchen with a large reindeer candlestick holder. “But since we’ll have everyone here, I thought we’d celebrate it tonight. I made the pies as well.”
“So now it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas AND Nana’s birthday? Let’s just celebrate New Year’s and Valentine’s Day while we’re at it!” I said, scrubbing my hands, quietly relieved there would still be pie.
The thing is, I love Thanksgiving – even more now that I’ve moved to Ireland. It’s not about gifts, or decorations, or gods, or prophets, or remembering wars and the people who fought in them. It’s about making time for the people in your life who matter to you, right now.
It’s about spending the entire day in the kitchen with your family and then sitting around a heaving table to enjoy the food you prepared together. And it’s a really big deal (look up the The New York Times #grapegate debacle of 2014 if you don’t believe me).
But celebrating Thanksgiving in a different country, where it’s just another work day and no one knows what yams are, just isn’t the same. Even my dad, brother and sister can seem indifferent, preoccupied with their lives on this side of the Atlantic. It has turned me into some strange American holiday enforcer: “We’re celebrating Thanksgiving and you’re all going to like it! You can be Irish 363 days of the year, but on Thanksgiving and the 4th of July you’re going to be American.”
Several hours later, I was still in the kitchen, carefully aligning pecans and marshmallows on top of my sweet potato casserole, when the guests – my mother’s brothers, sisters and their spouses – started to arrive.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted someone carrying a foil-covered dish. As soon as the guests were handed drinks and sent into the living room, I ran over to the counter where the mystery dish had been left and pulled back the foil. A ham.
“What the hell is this?”
My mother was getting impatient with me now. “Your aunt brought that and it was very nice of her,” she said sternly.
I’m vegetarian, I don’t even eat turkey, but I can’t allow a honey baked ham to steal the slightest bit of thunder from my dad’s Thanksgiving turkey.
“You can’t put that on the table! Save it for tomorrow or something.”
“It’s going on the table Kathleen,” said my mother.
At dinner, my brother, sister and I sat quietly next to my dad at one end of the table. My mother sat at the other end, which felt like miles away.
After more ham had been eaten than turkey, and after much confusion over the marshmallows in the dinner, I helped clear the table as my mother prepared dessert. As I brought the last of the dishes into the kitchen, she delivered the final blow: “Kathleen, there really isn’t enough pie for everyone. Would you mind just having cake?”
Everyone tucked into their desserts as I topped up my wine glass and stared across the room at the Santas, their stern little faces visible despite their beards.
“F**k it,” I thought. “Happy birthday Nana. And merry Christmas everyone.” There’s always next year.
