Celebrating Thanksgiving Abroad
Written by: Catherine Lemus
Major: Marketing
Location: Norway
I love the holidays! Ever since mid-October I have been playing holiday music while studying, cooking, and just walking through Oslo’s city center. The chilly air was really helping me to get excited about the upcoming holiday season, especially after visiting snowing Tromsø and returning to a while Oslo as well.
The one thing that has made me a bit nervous about this time of year is knowing it is my first holiday away from home. Even while at WMU, home is only 20 minutes away which means I have shared every holiday of my life with my mom, sisters, grandparents, aunt and newly added uncle. To me, what makes the holidays special is spending time with close friends and family as well as baking on the daily (I’m obsessed)! The way that I decided to cope with missing out on an American Thanksgiving this year was to plan one in Oslo.
I quickly learned that few of my exchange friends, most of whom are European, have never before celebrated the holiday of Thanksgiving. It makes sense really, why would Europeans celebrate a holiday commemorating the mass immigration of many of their ancestors to a new land? Regardless, I wanted to take advantage of the chance to host my very own Thanksgiving feast and show all of my friends what makes the event so fun!
One month prior to the holiday, I created a Facebook group and added around 15 of our closest friends here in Oslo. Since Thanksgiving is a holiday all about food, I posted a list of dishes that each guest could bring and I committed to cooking a turkey, gravy, and pumpkin pie (thanks Mom for sending canned pumpkin <3). The menu was to include mashed potatoes, green beans, cheese and crackers, lingonberry jam (the Norwegian version of cranberry sauce), salad, and lots of sweets!
The plan behind the Celebration
As the date got closer I began to face an unexpected challenge…the turkey. Honestly, I had just assumed I could find a turkey at a local grocery store as we do at home, not considering the fact that Norwegians don’t prepare turkeys around the holidays. Here a traditional holiday dish would consist more of pork rib, fish, or lamb. Since meat can get pretty pricey around here I began to sift through the local butchers shops and found a GREAT deal on chickens amounting to around $12 for three chickens. This might not seem like that great of a deal but in Norway, a pound of chicken breast can easily cost $6 so this price was a steal. A bit impulsively, I decided to order nine whole chickens and planned to pick them up Thanksgiving morning to have room to keep my normal groceries in my fridge in the meantime.
Thanksgiving morning finally came and one more challenge came with it…cooking pans. For both the nine chickens and my pumpkin pie, I was going to need baking tins. This resulted in a final grocery run to a neighborhood called Grønland which is known to have low prices on vegetables and kitchen items. Grønland is actually home to many Pakistani immigrants who are trying to built lives in Norway and this allows for them to sell items at much lower prices than other large chains in the city. Lucky for me, this is where I was able to find disposable baking tins and a cheap clay pie round which were exactly what I needed to make Thanksgiving a success.
Pumpkin Pie
Before any of the guests arrived, I spent my afternoon elbow deep in chickens and herbed butter (rosemary, thyme, and garlic make a FANTASTIC herb combo) and I assembled what looked to be enough food for a small soup kitchen. It is worth adding that I decided to rein myself in and only cook six of the original nine chickens ordered which now means I can eat chicken meat until I go home. The great thing about living in an apartment complex near many of my friends was that I was able to borrow a few friend’s ovens which made cooking all of the birds much less of a challenge. Every 30 minutes or so I would walk up and down my hall, knocking on doors and turning the chickens before returning to my home base apartment.
Two of Six Roasted Chickens
The final step was the table. Our BSN apartments here are Oslo are cute. Don’t get me wrong, on a normal evening they are perfect for my roomie Paula and I to cook dinner and chill while having enough space to veg out and unwind when needed. However, these apartments are not the best for hosting company. With the exception of a small table and three wooden chairs, we aren’t provided with much in the way of common space which meant we had to improvise to ensure all 15 of our guests could enjoy this dinner comfortably. Again, the luck of having so many of said guests living on the same floor as me meant that we could borrow their tiny tables and wooden chairs to make one giant table in my bedroom. Paula’s room became the coat room/storage room for my bed and viola, we had a dining room! I am honestly a bit disappointed that we never thought of this arrangement before because it turned out to be far more comfortable than expected!
Two American Cooks (Lauren and I) prepping for dinner
Around 7pm, our friends began to arrive and filled our apartment with lots of delicious scents and chatter. We were able to quickly set the table and began our Thanksgiving feast!
The thing that was must amusing to me was learning that very few of our guests had a clue what Thanksgiving was or why we celebrated it. This was even true for our Canadian friends who celebrate Thanksgiving themselves though a month earlier than the US. Myself and Lauren, a fellow WMU student, shared a brief version of the “pilgrim and indian story” with our guests and then required everyone to share one thing they were thankful for before digging in. The general themes were being thankful for the success of our study abroad (Erasmus) experience, new friendships formed, and fun! Personally, I felt most thankful to have a family of exchange students to celebrate my first holiday away from home alongside.
Our Makeshift Dining room a.k.a my bedroom
Our plates were full and for a rare moment with our friends, the room was very quiet as we enjoyed the dishes shared by the group. We ended up eating four and a half chickens and one of our friends was even able to take a whole chicken home as a “party favor” which was a pretty hilarious sight. By the time dessert came around, we were all stuffed but took small slices of pumpkin pie and Norwegian pepperkake (gingerbread cookies) along with small glasses of Italian limoncello, for digestive purposes only…
Dinner!
Celebrating an evening of friendship as our semester abroad in Norway comes to a close made for a perfect holiday! As we wrapped up our festivities (and rebuilt my bedroom) I couldn’t help but think that I didn’t want the night to end. I am so glad that my first holiday away from home was still spend surrounded by beautiful people who have began to feel like a family abroad!
Categories: Holiday, Norway, Celebrations, Cultural Experiences, Exchange