Turkey, Thursday & Thanksgiving

Our very commercialized style of celebrating Christmas today is the result of media hype that was orchestrated by enterprising businessmen. They did the same to Valentine’s Day and, in the past decades, to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, too.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States (Canada marks it on the second Monday of October). But some restaurants in Manila offer Thanksgiving menu even to Filipino diners. In fact, that was how I was able to experience my one and only Thanksgiving dinner ever — right in the very bowels of Manila, in the seedy side of Ermita.

My best friend from college — a Japanese national, who was an amateur boxing champion in his country — returned a year after graduation and invited me to a two-man reunion. Since he was billeted in a small hotel in the tourists’ belt, we had dinner in a restaurant nearby and it offered a Thanksgiving Day meal since that was the fourth Thursday of November.

Over a slice of turkey, corn and a dessert of pumpkin pie, I had to explain to him the significance of Thanksgiving in the US since Japanese schools obviously didn’t bother with American culture — unlike here in the tropical Philippines, where as early as first grade, pupils already get obsessed to see snow.

Since one of our books was This is My Town — an all-American reading material — I knew that Thanksgiving was started by the pilgrims who sailed to Massachusetts from England in 1620 via the Mayflower. (I recently hosted dinner for a niece — actually Krista Ranillo’s second cousin — who brought with her an American friend who traces her roots to people who were part of the Mayflower voyage and I treated her like a sacred relic.)

Since the crops they planted grew, those pilgrims became thankful for the blessings and prepared a feast. This was in 1621.

Exactly a decade later, Massachusetts declared it a holiday and in time, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the fourth Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day (to keep it away from Christmas) and this was eventually legislated by the US Congress in 1941.

I’ve never experienced Thanksgiving in the States, but I know it to be a big holiday there. Maybe since the only Thanksgiving meal I had was in some joint in Ermita, I’ve always been curious about how it is to have a real one in America.

Or perhaps it’s really just the turkey that I like. Turkey is a bird that had never been appreciated by the Filipino palate — even if we can raise that here. My mother insists that it’s bland. She’d bake ham, a whole chicken and even ducks — my pets from the backyard — but she’d never handle a turkey. I don’t believe her when she tells me it tastes like cardboard. It’s just her excuse since it is laborious to cook.

When the word turkey is mentioned, Lolit Solis always comes to mind. No, I’m not implying that she’s a turkey on TV. No, no, no. I associate her with turkey because I know she also likes it. The other week, I saw cranberry sauce in the supermarket and snapped it up right away because she said that it’s good for her kidney stones — or for some of the thousand and one afflictions she has now that she’s a senior citizen’s cardholder. I was hoping she’d wait until she gets a turkey during the holidays, but she already consumed the whole can. When I went back to the supermarket, they were already out of it.

Turkey also reminds me of Alfie Lorenzo because I remember how he once ordered a whole bird for New Year from the kitchen of Lilibeth Vera-Perez Nakpil. Lilibeth is an astute businesswoman and she will not give discounts even to friends. Business is business. That much we have to understand. When Alfie’s messenger came to pick up the turkey from Lilibeth, she refused to release the bird because the payment lacked P100. Poor messenger had to make another trip — this time with the P100, the amount Alfie had asked for as discount.

That story still drives me to laughter since I know Lilibeth and how strict she is when it comes to business. Oh, but I love the woman. In due fairness to her, she’ll give you quality food and will never shortchange you. But quality has a price. I wonder if she still accepts orders for turkey. If I can afford it this year, maybe I’ll get one as my Christmas gift to myself.

But no, I will not bother with Thanksgiving today. I will leave that to the Americans to celebrate. In our islands, every parish fiesta is a thanksgiving.

I’m writing about Thanksgiving so that we are also aware of other countries’ traditions — and not for us to start observing it. I can only hope local businessmen don’t turn this around and commercialize this American custom to make more profits from Filipinos.

If that happens, I will run away and retire in some faraway farm to raise, well, maybe turkeys.