Thanksgiving Reconsidered
“Are you still going to do Thanksgiving?”
This is one of the questions I get asked when I tell people I’ve renounced my US citizenship.
Yes, I am still doing Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving in the Netherlands
It’s always felt a little odd to celebrate Thanksgiving in the Netherlands. It’s a celebration of a particular event in American history, after all. Because almost all Americans celebrate it, regardless of their religion, it has a unifying effect. No matter what divides Americans—politics, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender, whatever—they still do Thanksgiving in one way or another.
Here in the Netherlands, the only people who celebrate Thanksgiving are expatriate Americans like me (and Canadians celebrate their equivalent Thanksgiving in October). In a way, it’s nothing but an homage to a remembered tradition—an exercise in nostalgia—rather than anything that’s really alive in our current lives.
It’s also more difficult here. I either have to special-order a turkey, or else drive across the border to Germany to find one in a supermarket. Turkeys don’t come with giblets, so I buy chicken hearts and livers to make the gravy. I make the cranberry sauce from scratch. Same with the pies: no store-bought crusts or canned pumpkin in Holland.
We also generally don’t do Thanksgiving on the day itself because we have to work on a Thursday. It usually takes place on the following Saturday to allow the full day for cooking. This year, since I don’t work on Fridays, we’ll have our meal this evening.
I always invite a few fellow Americans, though non-Americans often outnumber Americans. This year the party will include our family (my husband, our son, our two Syrian foster kids, and me), an American friend and her daughter, a Canadian and another American friend.
It’s always what the Dutch call gezellig, an untranslatable word that means a cozy, pleasant, congenial atmosphere.
Today’s Thanksgiving Dinner
It’s afternoon now, as I type this. The bread is on its second rising, the cranberry sauce is setting in the fridge, the pies have been baked, and the turkey is waiting to be stuffed and put in the oven. Later I’ll prepare the potatoes for mashing, shape and bake the dinner rolls, and my guests will bring various side dishes.
This year, though, I feel a bit of a fraud. I’ve renounced my citizenship. I’ve rejected the US, though I hasten to add it wasn’t really a rejection of the US as such but of how the US treats me and the rest of us Americans overseas.
It feels almost forbidden. Certainly if I’m not American, that would not prevent me from attending a Thanksgiving dinner. But it feels like I’ve somehow lost the right to prepare and serve the dinner myself.
I know that’s silly. Thanksgiving dinner is one of those lasting memories: we bring our childhood along with us into adulthood, and also into our lives in other countries. I can keep doing Thanksgiving for as long as I want. My children will carry it with them as one of their childhood memories, no matter where they end up settling down. My daughter, studying now in the US, prepared her own Thanksgiving meal for the first time yesterday.
I suspect, though, that Thanksgiving will, from now on, also become the day each year when I consider—and mourn—my lost citizenship: a bittersweet, nostalgic meal.
My whole US citizenship series:
- Part 1: Giving up US citizenship?
- Part 2: Republicans, expatriates, and FATCA
- Part 3: How my citizenship hit me in the gut
- Part 4: My renunciation day
- Part 5: Thanksgiving reconsidered
- Part 6: FATCA, the Tea Party, and me
- Part 7: Individual freedom, self-reliance and renunciation
- Part 8: Equality? Competition? Not overseas!
- Part 9: The American Dream
- Part 10: The irony of renouncing under duress
- Part 11: Open letter to President Obama in response to the State of the Union Address
- Part 12: 7 Reasons NOT to renounce
- Part 13: Citizenship matters
- Part 14: Citizen of a parallel world
- Part 15: Renunciations in the news
- Part 16: Vote … as a non-citizen? Really?
- Part 17: The ridiculous story of a pilot and his taxes
- Part 18: On receiving my Certificate of Loss of Nationality
- Part 19: So you think you want to emigrate…
- Part 20: Indignation Fatigue and FATCA
- Part 21: The US election, as seen by Americans overseas
- Part 22: On receiving my California voter ballot
- Part 23: Watching America fall apart on my renunciation anniversary
Rachel Heller is a writer living in Groningen, the Netherlands. She is the owner and primary author of this website, Rachel’s Ruminations, a travel blog focused on independent travel with an emphasis on cultural and historical sites/sights. Read more here about her and about this website. Rachel also owns and operates a website about travel to UNESCO World Heritage sites.
No one can take your childhood memories from you! You are as American as you feel and I know you feel American. The citizenship renunciation was more a formality that you were forced to take because of screwy tax rules.
Thanks for the support, Shobha!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday in the US, for all the reasons you mention. It’s just very American, celebrated regardless of religious or political persuasion. For us, it’s a time to gather with family and we always invite “foreigners” to share in this quintessential American holiday. This year we invited a Greek scientist who just started doing a post doc in my husband’s lab. On the way to our son’s house, we explained some of the “nuances”, including the likely possibility of family pathology to be on display. She laughed and said that she would feel right at home since family pathology is likely to be on display during just about all Greek family meals.
My students always ask about that as well. “Isn’t Thanksgiving the holiday where families get together and argue?” It’s what they’ve seen over and over on TV!