Thanksgiving in Two-Country Families: What Sits Next to the Turkey
The fourth Thursday is a rule, not a date, and it has only been law since 1941. What sits next to the turkey depends on which border the family crossed.
Thanksgiving does not fall on a date. It falls on a rule, the fourth Thursday of November, which is why it wanders across a full week from one year to the next.
The rule is younger than the holiday. In 1939, and again in 1940, the president moved Thanksgiving a Thursday earlier to lengthen the shopping season, sixteen states refused to go along, and for two years the country kept two Thanksgivings a week apart. The House voted in October 1941 to fix the holiday on the last Thursday of November. The Senate amended that to the fourth, which changes nothing except in the years when November has five Thursdays, and the amended version became law that December.
What ends up next to the turkey
In many families the table carries two countries at once, and the turkey is the part everyone already agrees on. Mexican American Thanksgivings have been described with tamales on the table and mole over the bird, one Chicago restaurant owner telling a reporter he builds his from three to five kinds of red chili. The shirt for that house is the Mexican American Perfect Heritage Heart Tee, two hands, two flags, and the heart between them left as bare fabric.
Filipino American households have been blunter about the bird. A family quoted in a national report skips most of the American spread because they find turkey too dry, and cooks pancit canton and pancit palabok instead. Other accounts have lumpia going around the table beside the American dishes rather than in place of them. The Filipino American Perfect Heritage Heart Hands Tee is drawn for exactly that room, the white triangle and the eight ray sun on one hand, the stripes on the other.
Italian American Thanksgiving is often a meal in two acts. One Chicago household described serving Italian soup and lasagna before the turkey, then rapini, sausage and homemade wine after it. Writers on Italian American cooking point out the practical problem this creates, since the oven is already occupied, and describe families reheating the lasagna while the bird is carved, or moving it out to a grill. The Italian American Perfect Heritage Heart Tee keeps the three bands of the flag equal, which is what the real one does and what most prints get wrong.
In Miami the question is pork or turkey, and the usual answer is both. Lechon asado, a whole pig marinated overnight in a mojo criollo of garlic, sour orange and spices, goes into a caja china, the boxy outdoor roaster, and comes out beside a turkey given the same citrus and garlic treatment. The Cuban American Perfect Heritage Heart Tee has the hardest job in this whole series, because the two flags share all three of their colors.
Colombian families interviewed about their own tables describe the American bird done their way, stuffed with apples, peaches, berries and dried nuts, with plantains next to the salad. The Colombian American Perfect Heritage Heart Tee gives the yellow band twice the depth of the other two, because the flag does.
The families who keep the two menus apart
Not everyone blends, and the ones who do not are worth reporting too. Two Polish American women interviewed in Chicago about Thanksgiving said their households cook the standard American meal on the fourth Thursday and keep the Polish food for Christmas. That is not a weaker tradition, it is a different arrangement of the same year. Wigilia on December 24 carries the weight, so Thanksgiving is allowed to be plain American. The Polish American Perfect Heritage Heart Tee gets worn either way, and the month that belongs to it is covered in Polish American Heritage Month.
Where the shirts fit into this
Every design named above comes from one drawing. Two hands, each painted in the colors of one flag, meeting so that the shirt itself makes the heart in the middle. Nothing is printed inside it. The two countries are held at the same size, with neither reduced to a corner, and the full range sits in American Heritage Hearts. They are printed on black and shipped by Amazon. We draw them, and that is where our part ends.
A heritage shirt is not a costume and it does not need an occasion. It happens to work well on a day when three generations are in the same kitchen and somebody is going to take a photograph of all of them at once.
Questions people ask
When is Thanksgiving?
The fourth Thursday of November, by federal law since December 1941. Not the last Thursday, which is a different day in any year that November happens to have five of them.
Why was the date ever moved?
To make the shopping season longer. The holiday was pushed a week earlier in 1939 and 1940, sixteen states refused to follow, and Congress ended two years of confusion by writing the fourth Thursday into law.
What do Filipino families cook for Thanksgiving?
Published accounts describe pancit, lumpia and lechon, sometimes alongside the turkey and sometimes instead of it. There is no single menu, and plenty of Filipino American families cook the American one and nothing else.