(November 30, 2018/  Jorge Ibanez / Photo: Jorge Ibanez)

 

Well, wasn’t this a ‘de Paz’ Thanksgiving….

This festivity, based on an absolute falsified ‘historic’ anecdote, has taken such a hold in Puerto Rico that you would swear the Pilgrims landed near Yabucoa (God forbid, Catholics were bad enough!!). And, although not yet a deserving challenge to Christmas, it has become a big party production and you can even hear neighbors wishing each other ‘Happy Thanksgiving’! And there is of course the story of the little kid named Givinito in honor of San Givin…

But back to the big party production, a specialty of the De Paz family, into which I married 45 years ago. Well, the family started big to begin with, 8 brothers and sisters, but then came husbands and grandkids and nephews and nieces and brothers and sisters of the husbands and wives and before long any intimate small gathering did not make it less than 30 guests and counting. And those were the very intimate ones…

When my brother in law Gilberto pulled out his guitar and started the music (Christmas or birthdays) the whole place exploded into a frenetic dancing, for instance. There not being too much room for such a large group, it looked from my perspective (from which I was never able to join the fray) like Watusis jumping in place. And don’t get me going about saying grace for Thanksgiving: the tradition was to take turns for everyone to say why he/she was grateful. Well, by the time the last De Paz was done being grateful, the turkey was cold!

Now, it happens that families evolve and all these years later, some husbands have been asked to spend Thanksgiving with their wives’ families and not to mention how the family has grown out of control (it is still growing!) and someone floated an idea this year to sort of bring some common sense into this oh, so not Puertorrican ‘efemeride’. Why don’t we wait to celebrate Christmas together in a traditional big blowout and take Thanksgiving back to the intimate seat around the table and say grace and carve the turkey by each one celebrating with their own family? What a novel idea…

The idea was a hit (although Gilberto is on the way to reproduce the cycle on his own…) and everyone congratulated each other for thinking it and we all made plans to proceed with an intimate more gringo thanksgiving sans the parranda spirit. And, of course, everyone proceeded to invite the matriarch, Doña Ara (Don Oscar left us some years ago) to spend Thanksgiving with them. Well, the invitations kept climbing and pretty soon it was obvious that unless Doña Ara turned into Schrodinger’s cat she would have to make some tough choices. And if you knew Doña Ara, you saw this one coming: no way was she going to prefer one invitation over another.

Da. Ara put her foot down. She was very upset, to begin with, about all this each one on his own concept. Thanksgiving had always been celebrated in her house, as she saw it should be, and should always be. After all, that was where it started, no? So she saw it as being robbed of a tradition and that is how families start drifting apart, etc. Her words. Thanksgiving was hers. Soooo, she informed everyone that she was not going to spend Thanksgiving with any one in particular, she was going to stay home and cook something for herself and ‘if anyone is interested in seeing me, he can come visit’. Talk about passive aggressive…

And things started unraveling at light speed. I think it started with Wanda, that called her sister in law Bruni, that talked to her husband Gilberto that talked to Rafa (Wanda had me in the bag 45 years ago, that front was covered…) and soon it was agreed that we would cook our specialties as previously planned but then take them to Da. Ara’s in a sort of smorgasbord pot luck. You can see where this is going, right?

We were the first ones to arrive with our goodies (the ‘girls’ have came down from Charlotte and Jess has whipped up  an amazing panzanella with radicchio & Roquefort that just the sight of floored you, see photo above) and soon after us others started filing in and soon we had a crowd, had to open a third table and guests would come through all afternoon, some of them unable to leave after tasting the good vibes.

And Da. Ara dashed here and there happier than a seagull with a French fry.</p>

Happy Thanksgiving!