A Pontifical Thanksgiving

As incredible as Italian cuisine can be, no American living in Italy can avoid the opportunity to have real down-home country American fare – at least, not on Thanksgiving Day. Still, it is a challenge to replicate a traditional Thanksgiving meal in a country that does not understand stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and why we must have a Turkey.

The process of preparing Thanksgiving is a team effort; even the Turkey required four people and a handful of confused Italian priests in order to come to its full realization. First, there is the process of ordering the bird, one that is the right size, and is whole (Italians don’t always understand that the process of roasting the whole bird, rather than in pieces, makes a big difference). Then, once the pre-ordered bird has arrived at the butcher, there is the process of trying to explain (in broken Italian no less) that you would appreciated it indeed if the head, claws, and any indicants that it was once a living animal that had eyes and feet.

Then, there is the process of cooking the bird. For this, our little Thanksgiving Team was fortunate to have the help of a local parish Community House, complete with dining hall and an industrial-sized kitchen. Surrounded by curious eyes and lots of mutterings in Italian, I rinsed the 17-pound bird, gently lifted the skin and reached up to my elbows to spread an herb garlic butter between the meat and the skin, and stuffed the insides with onions, garlic, celery, and whatever herbs I could get my hands on. Aside from some excessive poking on the part of an Italian which let a few too many juices out, the Turkey came out of the oven smelling divine and tasting even better.

At the meal, there was stuffing, Pumpkin Pie, green-beans, bread rolls, and many other odds and ends of Thanksgiving goodness, all surrounding a massive home-cooked Turkey. However, what makes Thanksgiving significant is the togetherness, the joining of family and friends together over a good home-cooked meal. It’s an element of American culture that many foreign cultures think that we lack, when in fact it is as integral to us as to anyone else. For us Americans, especially those of us living in Rome, Thanksgiving is the opportunity to share this community element with people from other cultures, in a way that only Americans can.