‘Now I make it a big deal’: What it’s like to celebrate Thanksgiving as an American expat in Europe

As preparations are finalised across the US for Thanksgiving, hundreds of thousands of American expats around the world are choosing how to celebrate the festivity wherever they find themselves. 

The celebration is deeply rooted in American history, with thanksgiving services and harvest festivals recorded as early as the 17th century. 

So do expats choose to mark the quintessentially American festivity abroad and if so, what traditions do they keep up? 

Euronews Travel talked to four Americans living in Europe to find out. 

‘I’ll never give up on Thanksgiving’

Jodi lives in Ispica, a small town on the east coast of Sicily close to where her Italian ancestors originated. 

Back in the US, Thanksgiving was her favourite holiday and an all-out celebration in her household. 

“Thanksgiving has been the only holiday that has ever been important to me, I was so over the commercialisation of Christmas,” she says. 

“This was a gathering of family and friends together for a fabulous all-day eating experience and showing my gratitude for them being in my life. I’ve cooked for as many as 40 for a sit-down dinner.”

Since coming to Sicily, she has found it harder to maintain the tradition.  

“It’s been a culture shock and I haven’t celebrated a Thanksgiving with all the trimmings yet,” she says. “It’s different to not have that but I’m becoming ok with it.”

Instead, she has come to embrace other festivities that are cherished much more where she lives now than in the US. 

“Easter blows my mind here, the ceremonies and processions are spectacular,” Jodi says. “Thousands of people from around the world come here for Holy Week.” 

“What’s slowly happening for me is not replacing Thanksgiving and its meaning but expanding my heart to embrace how beautifully represented other holidays are here in a non-commercial way,” she adds.  

As such, today she’s going out for a special steak dinner with friends to mark the American festivity. 

Next year, she hopes to be able to access the supermarket of the American Navy Base nearby so that she can buy traditional Thanksgiving foods and host her own dinner with an international group of her friends.

“I don’t think I’ll ever give up on Thanksgiving because of the meaningfulness for me,” she says. 

‘I’m going to start a Thanksgiving tradition here’

Josephine lives on an olive farm on the west coast of Sicily where she moved to a year and a half ago. 

She was born in New York to Sicilian parents, so her Thanksgivings amalgamated Italian and American traditions. 

“As a first generation in America we would cook regular Sunday dinner Italian food and have the turkey as a symbol - no one would eat the turkey, we didn’t even really know how to cook it!” she says.

When Josephine began hosting her own Thanksgiving dinners as an adult, she grew more attached to the holiday and embraced more classically American fare. 

“We started to have our own friends and family and see the importance of the celebration as getting everyone together,” she said. 

“We’d make our own decisions in the kitchen and try all these modern ways of preparing Thanksgiving food.”

Now, she wants to establish Thanksgiving as a festivity in her Sicilian home. 

“I’ve really been wanting to do something this year and I’ve been thinking of a menu with turkey legs and a winter squash - just not Italian food,” Josephine says. 

“I’d like for the kids to get involved and keep some American traditions and Thanksgiving is really the only American festivity apart from 4th of July,” she says. 

“It’s funny that I didn’t really celebrate Thanksgiving in the proper way in America but now I’m making a big deal of it!

‘Thanksgiving isn’t a national holiday anymore’

John and Katy are a retired American couple who moved to Paris a year and a half ago, the city where they met and married decades ago during a previous stint living there. 

The couple used to celebrate Thanksgiving when living in the US, but this year feels very different for them. 

“Because of the results of the election I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving as a national holiday,” says Katy. 

“The results tell me that we are not the United States anymore. I am beyond depressed at the situation because it is our fellow citizens that have made this decision - we as this unit called Americans have said to the world we only care about us and we’re going to do things our way.”

“Things have changed and celebrating what’s called a national holiday that says everybody is together does not ring true any longer,” she adds. 

For John, Thanksgiving was never more than a big meal for him, but now he says the situation has made him feel he wants to give thanks for what the US in the past gave him and his immigrant grandparents. 

He feels values have since been lost in his home country. 

“I’m embarrassed for the US and my fellow citizens, it breaks my heart to see the disregard for people and cultures,” he says. 

“We were so much more of a country when we were a big melting pot and we are losing that.”

The couple say they will spend Thanksgiving being grateful for more personal things. 

“We are thankful for each other and our friends and families and what our ancestors did for us,” says Katy.