My favorite holiday, an Arab American Thanksgiving
Of all the holidays we celebrate in America, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite, bringing families together and strengthening the memories of our family pasts
By Ray Hanania
FREE/Thanksgiving Family Tradition/Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024
The greatest joy for many people is the remembrance of loving moments that we experienced when we were children. And for many children, it involves their mother.
When I was young, I didn't see my dad that much. He left for work early before we got up to take the bus to his job in Chicago's "Loop" and didn't return home until the evening.
Dad was handsome. Everyone said he looked like Humphrey Bogart, the Hollywood actor. Like Bogart, he smoked a lot of cigarettes, Camel filter-less, and Lucky Strikes.
We didn't have much technology in our homes growing up, but we did have some fancy-looking ashtrays and cigarette holders next to the heavy black telephones and the black-and-white RCA television sets with their six channels.
I always wondered what the "Loop" was. Lucky Loops? The cloth band on the backs of your Gant dress shirts? I wanted those shirts so bad, but they were expensive, and we couldn't afford them. Or Fruit Loops, which were a little expensive to buy when they were showcased on television in 1963.
Mom had a part-time job, too, at the local Solo Cup factory in Jeffery Manor. But she left for work as we left for school and returned home when we did, so we spent more time with her. We had a lot of plastic and red Solo Cups in the pantry, that they gave to the employees.
I got a job, illegally, when I was 14, working at the Burger King on 87th and Luella, two blocks from my home, earning a whopping 95 cents per hour.
My Mom and Dad were immigrants to this country. Legal immigrants who came here with a love for America that matched their love for their homeland, Palestine. Dad was from a Christian family in Jerusalem. Mom was from a Christian family that lived in Bethlehem near the Church of the Nativity, where my relatives today serve as priests. They traced their family trees back a thousand years there.
By the time I came into consciousness, in my early teens, my dad had gotten very sick. He died when I had turned 17. Mom ended up carrying the load of the home mortgage, paying the bills, and putting food on the table. Although the little money I made, about $25 a week helped some. The home mortgage was about $120 a month, so my money helped a lot.
We didn't have health insurance back then. We could only go to the dentist when the school arranged visits for families, about once each year. I had crooked teeth. Most of my friends did far better and could afford braces.
Lunch sometimes consisted of Wonder Bread, bread slices with margarine (butter was for the rich), with sugar sprinkled on top, a glass of milk, and the lunchtime episodes of Bozo's Circus. And when we could, we always ate together as a family on the little table next to the Zenith radio and record player console that we bought second-hand. Mom often played Arabian music on it at dinner time. Farid al-Atrash, and Fairuz. The Middle Eastern music rhythm of "Ala Dal'ona" would waif through our small two-story brick Georgian home.
Who wasn't happy?
But while food in the pantry was a little scarce, the holidays were the bright sparks of family life.
Christmas. Easter. And, Thanksgiving.
Christmas was about giving, and for kids, about getting, too. And Church services. Easter was about Church services, too, and candy and eggs.
But Thanksgiving was about food. Lots of it.
My mom was a great cook. Evening dinners consisted of many Arabian food recipes that took a lot of time and effort to prepare. Rice and diced lamb stuffed grape leaves, stuffed zucchini, and stuffed potatoes. Just enough to enjoy. Although I would wrap the little green mushy Okrah in a napkin and try to sneak it out to the cement box garbage in the alley.
Mom often prepared a modest-sized turkey stuffed with spiced rice and diced lamb, with one stuffed item, usually grape leaves, on the side. She made other side dishes of tabouli salad, hummus, and lentil soup.
We hungered for Thanksgiving. At the beginning of the dinner, Dad, then later Mom, would lead an Orthodox prayer of gratitude.
Those Thanksgiving dinners left an enduring memory that has followed me through life.
It was less about the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and who were welcomed and fed by the Native Americans -- they called them Indians, as in Cowboys, when I grew up. We never did learn until later how the settlers destroyed Native American culture to build their wealth and success.
Thanksgiving was all about family, more so than any of the other holidays.
Until today, every Thanksgiving, I offer a quiet little prayer, reciting the names of every family member who I knew who passed away and died, starting with both my parents. It included Nader Masserwah, the son of family friends who had been killed in a motorcycle accident. All my cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, great-grandparents, and in-laws, too.
"Rubah attinah feedinyah hassinah," in Arabic. A prayer for all their beautiful souls: roughly translated, "We have given him (her), His Lord, and We have bestowed upon him (her), His religion."
I have two favorite and famous sayings that I have held close to my heart growing up: From Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."
The other is from French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
I also live by a saying that my mother and father taught me when I was growing up: "Treat others the way you would want them to treat you."
I try Mom, and Dad.
Happy Thanksgiving.