Living abroad, it’s always a little precarious when holidays roll around. Do you celebrate American style? Or temper the celebration because you are away from home? Our first year in Switzerland, holidays took us by surprise. In learning to care for a new baby, we forgot to care about calendars and our favorite festive days snuck up on us without notice.
Halloween, for example, caught us completely off-guard. By the time I realized that Halloween was fast approaching, there was no time to order Addi a costume from the U.S.—and they didn’t sell them here in her size. The costumes that they sell here are the cheap grocery store kind. You know, the ones with the plastic suit and flat mask? I always felt bad for those kids … and I’m sure that their candy yield was adversely affected too.
I lamented that I didn’t have a Halloween costume for my first daughter’s first Halloween … worrying that I was already ruining her childhood. My mom heard the sentimentality cry and sent us a pumpkin costume, which arrived mid-November. So, our Halloween was celebrated in November. I backdated the photos and Addi will never know.
Americans always ask if kids here celebrate Halloween. They do, but with way less gusto than in the U.S. When we were kids, we used to run from house to house for two hours straight to get the goods. It was the one time that you could eat as much candy as you could hold, and I was not to be outdone. It was un-calorie-counting bliss. Kids here seem to be satisfied with less, or they’re just plain lazy. They knock on a few doors half-heartedly and then call it a night. I could teach them a trick or two!
Thanksgiving—my personal favorite holiday— presents another set of issues. A turkey is not as easy to come by as a bag of suitable candy, and it takes several intense ingredient-finding missions to gather the ingredients for all the trimmings.
Last year, there was no Thanksgiving. We just didn’t have the energy to put together a feast. I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner all year, so it was a sad, sad day for me. You can imagine my excitement then this year when my friend Tracy invited us to share Turkey Day with her family. I was like Pavlov’s dog … salivating at the suggestion of turkey.
My offering for the Thanksgiving feast was the pumpkin pie, cranberries, and green bean casserole. The pumpkin proved to be no problem, thanks to my handy neighborhood American store. Hilarious. They had a whole Thanksgiving display set out for the celebrating ex-pat. I will admit that I also snatched up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup. Oh, yes, it was Campbell’s—you can’t get any more mid-Western than that. I can say that I left the canned turkey gravy and the french fried onions on the shelf though. My mom had already sent me those in a padded envelope. Now that’s love—sending french fried onions through the mail.
In order to complete the casserole, I needed French-cut green beans. I was mystified that I couldn’t find them anywhere. I had to settle for regular ones, but doesn’t it strike you as odd that we are less than twenty miles from France and there are no French-cut green beans? It makes me wonder about the authenticity of said beans. Are they really French? Or cleverly named by some marketing exec to make us think we are eating beans that are slightly more cultured and sophisticated?
The cranberries were no easy find either. Tracy and her mom took it upon themselves to track down the coveted berries. Tracy’s mom, who doesn’t speak French, decided to rely upon one store’s clerks for help locating the much-needed berries. Tracy warned her that the store employees would be of little help, but the woman was determined––she would have cranberries. She began selecting clerks at random and grilling them as to the whereabouts of the cranberry. They gave her the most withering of looks. Then she worked her tried and true Tactic Americana: if the person doesn’t understand, ask louder and slower in English. Before long she was demanding that the clerk––demanding that the whole store––please direct her to the cranberries. A nice random woman couldn’t but overhear the exchanges, and she pointed Tracy’s mom in the direction of a cranberry-carrying grocery store. We gave thanks over our delicious dinner.
