On the fourth Thursday of November, Americans put politics and personal grievances on pause to count the year’s blessings over a hearty Thanksgiving feast. At least in theory.
Cornucopia centrepieces and “Kumbaya” moments live mostly in Martha Stewart catalogues and Norman Rockwell paintings. Thanksgiving tables are fertile ground for awkward silences, bitten tongues, and quotable rants from drunken uncles.
There’s an unwritten record of who carved the turkey wrong in 2007, and there’s probably a burnt casserole to pick at politely. Still, there’s something wonderful about Thanksgiving’s invitation to look at the world through rose-tinted glasses by gathering around a large bird — or its meatless alternative — and give thanks.
Abraham Lincoln once invoked Thanksgiving to “heal the wounds” of a nation captured by civil war, and 161 years later, most Americans wouldn’t miss it. In a globalised world full of discord and distress, Thanksgiving is catching on in unexpected places, South Africa included.
“[South Africans] like what Thanksgiving is,” says Chris Keene, CEO of Thrupps & Co. “You’re giving thanks. You’re giving back ... South Africans come in and say: ‘OK, we’ve got our family together. We’re also going to do Thanksgiving.’ Because they like the idea ... I think we’ve become a lot more of an open society, and people have embraced it.”
Keene says Thrupps has catered to expat US families for as long as he can remember, but he didn’t pay much attention to Thanksgiving until about 10 years ago. Nowadays, the grocer that’s nearly as old as Joburg puts on a weeklong Thanksgiving display table at its Illovo emporium on Oxford Road, and Keene has noticed that local requests for full Thanksgiving spreads outnumber inquiries from Americans.
Dani Pick, owner of the Butcher Shop & Grill, says turkeys fly off the shelves at the Mouille Point branch partly because more Americans are making a home in Cape Town, and also because locals see Americans celebrating Thanksgiving in “movies, series, magazines, all those type of things, TikTok ... and it’s almost like a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ thing”. It’s a phenomenon Pick has observed at the Sandton location too, and he doesn’t see the demand for Thanksgiving staples abating soon.
The spirit of the holiday is beguiling in its own right. Keene’s eyes brighten when he says his own family have started to celebrate a form of Thanksgiving in recent years. It’s a convenient way for South African families to get ahead of Christmastime logistics. Since so many South Africans travel over the holidays, Keene says, the fact that children are in school and parents are at work in November gives friends and families a chance to have a full-scale holiday feast that wouldn’t be possible come December.
Thanksgiving might have made inroads in South Africa, but the imagery Americans associate with the holiday could be a tougher sell — not least because the idea of wearing a scratchy Gobble Gobble jersey isn’t all that attractive on a muggy summer afternoon in KwaZulu-Natal. Down to the corny cartoons lining turkey day tableware, Thanksgiving décor reflects a deeply US mythology unlikely to resonate with South Africans.
It’s almost like a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ thing
— Dani Pick, the Butcher Shop & Grill
Any American over the age of five can recount the story of the first Thanksgiving four centuries ago, when pilgrims broke bread with Native Americans, who helped the settlers survive their first winter in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Legend has it that the Mayflower Pilgrims, the indigenous Wampanoags, and a Native American liaison to the pilgrims named Squanto celebrated for three whole days in convivial peace. As it turns out, the first Thanksgiving might not have had turkey at all, the liaison’s name wasn’t really Squanto and his fluent English was no happy coincidence. Tisquantum had been kidnapped and enslaved by an Englishman and returned to what was to become the US to find his tribe had been wiped out by disease, leading him to live among the Wampanoags on Cape Cod.
The popular account of the first Thanksgiving is historically dubious at best, a violent act of whitewashing at worst. Thanksgiving’s message of harmony and gratitude persists — as does the tradition of schoolchildren fashioning brass-buckled pilgrim hats and handprint-shaped turkeys out of construction paper — and it’s maturing with the country’s own sensibilities in a way South Africans can relate to.
“Our awareness as a nation of Thanksgiving has evolved as we’ve come to understand and recognise our own history regarding the treatment of Native Americans,” an official from the US mission to South Africa says in a written statement to the FM. “But the values we celebrate on this national holiday — community, family, gratitude, charity — are as important to Americans as ever. Our celebration of the holiday crosses religious, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic and political lines — we all celebrate as fellow Americans in many ways on that day. Those values and the celebration of unity through diversity are shared by both the US and South Africa, making our Thanksgiving celebrations here in South Africa particularly special.”
The US embassy in Pretoria cannot confirm how many Americans live in South Africa, but all are aware that Thanksgiving celebrations in Mzansi are indeed special. South Africa’s Day of Reconciliation on December 16 falls just 18 days after this year’s Thanksgiving on November 28, when the southern hemisphere summer will call for creative takes for the South African palate.
Pick says his US clients have started to take cues from South African summertime staples.
“The Americans have started to follow our Christmas style of lunches and so on,” says Pick. “We celebrate in the summertime, as opposed to the winter, and for that reason, we tend to be eating a lot more things like seafood, prawns, those kind of things that we put on the braai.”
Pick says the deli section of the Butcher Shop & Grill — though not the restaurant — will carry all kinds of meats suitable for Thanksgiving: lamb, rib and, of course, turkey. Though shoppers in South Africa are unlikely to find an XXL wild turkey flown in from Pennsylvania Dutch Amish country.
Keene at Thrupps says his store hasn’t been able to import turkeys from the US since Covid.
Pick says the US can’t supply enough, so the Butcher Shop & Grill is bringing in turkeys from South America. “[They’re] not as large as the American turkey. So the turkeys we sell are anywhere from 2kg to 4kg.”
Though Peruvian and Brazilian turkeys often sold in South Africa are about half the size of the North American behemoths — entry-level birds weigh in at about 6kg — the smaller birds are turkeys just the same, and there are a couple of benefits to a lighter bird. For one, they’ll fit inside a South African oven. Two, they roast much faster — obviating the international charge to consult the pros at the 1-800-Butterball Turkey-Talk Line, a hotline that helps with turkey prep. And two 4kg turkeys can provide two different stuffings to easily furnish a feast for 15.
While roasting is the traditional approach, and first-timers might want to err on the safe side, there’s no shortage of online tutorials to help the bravest hosts deep fry or encase their turkeys in monkfish, or even conquer the challenging turducken, deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck and further stuffed into a deboned turkey.
If you’re looking to participate in Thanksgiving without spending two days in the kitchen, Thrupps offers spreads complete with its homemade cranberry sauce from November 22. Keene says customers need call only a day in advance for bespoke stuffings, and his team will do their best to accommodate any request, but the default will be a classic sage-and-onion stuffing made from scratch.
Naturally there’s no dinner party without a wine pairing. Though Keene prefers a chilled Cederberg chenin blanc as a complement to turkey, he says Thrupps will offer a seasonal light red Thanksgiving favourite too.
While roasting is the traditional approach, and first-timers might want to err on the safe side, there’s no shortage of online tutorials to help the bravest hosts deep fry or encase their turkeys in monkfish
On the third Thursday of the month (November 21 this year), France releases its first red of the year’s harvest: Beaujolais Nouveau. Elgin estate Radford Dale believes it has a South African equivalent. The estate’s business development manager, Tom Prior says the Radford Dale wines made with the Beaujolais varietal gamay, priced between R199 and R399 a bottle, come close.
The winery is the first local estate in 20 years to cultivate gamay grapes. It believes the way gamay takes to South African terroir will further highlight the country’s status as a viticultural powerhouse. Radford Dale’s 8ha of gamay vines represent nearly the entire local planting.
“Gamay we see as being as adaptable to our vineyards in the Cape as chenin; it loves granite soil compositions,” says Prior.
Inevitably, around Thanksgiving dinner tables — in the US and even here — there will be talk of Donald Trump, but Joe Biden will have the stage: a few days before he will deliver his final presidential turkey pardon from the White House.
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