Thanksgiving –– Polonian Style

By Robert Strybel

Thanksgiving Day, celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday of November and in Canada on the second Monday of October, is obviously not a Polish-rooted holiday, but it has been eagerly observed by Polonians since way back when. This author’s late Uncle Jan Ciosmak, who returned to Poland after spending several years working in a “car shop” in Erie, PA, prior to World War I, once told me that the most important American holiday (as he remembered it) was something he called “cziken dej”. I can only assume that the word “Thanksgiving” was probably too much of a mouthful for many Polish peasant immigrants of the day, so to make things easier someone started calling it “Chicken Day” (It should be remembered that before World War I chicken was a special treat reserved for Sunday dinners and turkey was a once-a-year luxury.) Speaking of tongue-twisters, probably quite a few Americans, including some of Polish extraction, would likewise have problems with the likes of “Swieto Dziekczynienia”, the way the American holiday is referred to in Polish.

Some recent arrivals to America may have initially viewed the Thanksgiving tradition as a typical WASP occasion – something unfamiliar or even alien. After all, it commemorates the activities of a group of English refugees, who arrived in America in 1620, so why should it concern later arrivals of different backgrounds? An interesting answer was provided by Polonian columnist Andrzej Hetnal, who a few years ago wrote in Chicago’s Polish-language daily “Dziennik Zwiazkowy”: “Thanksgiving is above all the holiday of the ‘wayward traveler’ who made it over to that safe haven known as the United States (...) It reaffirms America’s immigrant heritage and inclines every inhabitant of this country to briefly reflect upon not only the uniqueness of that first Thanksgiving dinner in the early 17th century but also upon all the other such feasts that followed with the participation of newcomers from distant, alien climes.”

Far less commercialized than Christmas, Thanksgiving is undoubtedly the most beautiful uniquely American holiday in the calendar, a time set aside to thank God for the many blessings he has bestowed. It is also a very family-oriented occasion, a holiday when one simply has to be with one’s nearest of kin. It is therefore the closest thing America has to our Polish Wigilia. Like Polish Christmas Eve, the menu is also rather structured: roast turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc. But even there the immigrant experience has helped to enrich the spread. The difference between those who are ‘just plain Americans’ and those of us fortunate enough to have strong ethnic ties is that they eat “just turkey and the traditional trimmings”. We ethnics likewise have turkey but the feast is often embellished with one or more national dishes as well.

In this author’s Stateside family “kielbsa z kapusta” (baked fresh Polish sausage and sauerkraut) as well as “klopsiki w sosie grzybowym” (meatballs in mushroom gravy) were often served on Thanksgiving. Other Polish-American families sometimes serve “babka”, “szarlotka”, “placek” and/or “sernik” in addition to or in place of pumpkin pie, and many bring in the bigos as a late-evening pick-me-up. Italo-American regularly include some of their wonderful antipasti and pasta dishes at the feast as well as their traditional wines, desserts and pastries. Other ethnic groups behave similarly. If you don’t already do so, perhaps this year is the time to consider enriching your family’s Thanksgiving fare with a few additions from our Polish culinary treasure chest.

This also holds true for Thanksgiving dinners organized by Pol-Am clubs and parishes as community events. Such organized festivities open to the general public might go over especially well in places with many temporary residents (students, trainees), retired couples or people living alone. Perhaps the officiating clergyman’s introductory remarks or a printed program could recall the fact that Polish immigrants were no newcomers to America’s shores. In fact, a group of them managed to set up the nucleus of America’s first industry at Jamestown, Virginia, and even stage the country’s first civil-right protest several years before anybody had heard of the Mayflower pilgrims.