“Hello, and welcome to our Thanksgiving celebration!  I’m thankful to be hosting this wonderful event with the most beautiful, the most dear hostess, Kitty!”

Friday’s introduction startles the first year students into bewildered silence.  He flashes a smile at his audience, and expectantly turns to Kitty, who smiles demurely and replies, “Oh Friday, you joke!  I’m happy to be here announcing the Thanksgiving celebrations with you, the most funny and handsome host.  You know, Thanksgiving is one of the most important holidays in America.  It is also celebrated in Canada and some parts of the United Kingdom.”

“It’s true, Kitty.  People in American celebrate by eating with their families and thinking of everything they are thankful for.  But now let’s listen to our American correspondent in the field, Nicky!”

You might be wondering, as I was a few weeks ago, why my students are hosting a talk-show style celebration about Thanksgiving, instead of feasting on roast turkey and stuffing.  There are several viable answers to this query, including: there are no turkeys in Russia, only oversized chickens; Russia does not celebrate its colonization by religious zealots; a holiday is not a holiday in Russia without traditional songs and dances.  So here we are on Thanksgiving Day, performing poems, skits, dances, and songs that are definitely American though not remotely traditional, but nevertheless performing them as though this is how every American commemorates the first English settlement in the New World. 

The back story for this peculiar situation is that in October, one ancient professor asked me to help her organize a coffee house style event for her more advanced students.  I gladly agreed, eager to share my favorite poetry and modern folk songs with my students.  But somewhere between October and November, the coffee house became the Thanksgiving celebration, and the idea that Americans celebrate this holiday with plays and performances got stuck into this ancient professor’s head.  This is how Gold by Donald Hall, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, and the Cha Cha Slide became the iconic traditions of Thanksgiving Day for my Russian students.  Sorry, Uncle Sam.

Before the holiday can run too far away from its roots, I have the chance to reel it back in.  I step to the front of the classroom and face the entire first year class.  They stare at me blankly.  I smile at them.  Keeping my speech simple and clear, I tell them about the Pilgrims.  My hands become the Mayflower and the raging sea, and they float across the cleared stage from England to New England.  I search for food with the fervor of the starving settlers, I fight against myself with the ferocity of the native tribes, I shiver and quake in the cold of that first winter.  The students begin to nod as I reach the part when the Pilgrims make friends with the Wampanoug, and some even smile as they recognize the conclusion of my tale: the first Thanksgiving!  Now I have them around my finger because I’m telling them about my own family, about the feast of turkey (fish for me!), stuffing, toasted pumpkin, sweet and bitter cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, grilled asparagus, pumpkin pie, apple pie, spiked chocolate pecan pie, good wine, and dark coffee that I’m missing this year; about the table that stretches from the dining room into the living room to fit my parents, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, Mimi, neighbors, and cats; about my friend who has Thanksgiving dinner with fifty relatives and twenty loaves of fresh-baked sourdough bread.    Before I can start drooling, I finish my speech and return the event to its Macy’s Parade-style host and hostess.

Kitty and Friday flawlessly guide us through dances, poetry recitations, of course the Cha Cha Slide (a “modern take on traditional American line dancing”), and the big finale of “Twelve Angry Pigs,” a farce of “Twelve Angry Men” that makes heavy reference to The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Boy Blue, and Charlotte’s Web.  The actresses and professors love the allusions, but I’m afraid that they were all lost on the young audience.  Regardless of language comprehension, everyone loves the costumes and occasional ‘oinks!’, and the celebration ends in a standing ovation.  I’m still unsure as to whether the first year students learned anything about the actual holiday, but they seemed to enjoy themselves, and that’s the main idea of any holiday, right?