The place? A living room stuffed to bursting, crammed with every table and chair that can be found in the house. The people? Thirty of diverse ages and accents. The menu? Smoked salmon on sliced baguette, followed by a hearty cassoulet, and finished up with cheese platters, clafoutis d’automne, chocolate cake, apple tart, and boxes and boxes of chocolate. And don’t forget the bottles of red wine.
Welcome to the Fête de Famille, 2008 edition.
It’s the time of year when the enormous clan I call my family gets together ostensibly for lunch and spends the next six hours trying to get in as many words as possible into conversation. Tables groan under the weight of the food platters, and just in case we need the encouragement, Mamy Luce flutters around, urging seconds. Obama is topic of the hour, especially as the American branch of the family is actually present for the annual family celebration for the first time in four years. My mother and my uncle Benoit prowl around the room, gleefully snapping candids with their long-lens cameras.
In effect, it’s our French Thanksgiving. Of course, we don’t usually celebrate it anywhere near the end of November; the last Fête I attended was four years ago in August. With two European parents, almost all my family lives overseas; Thanksgiving, for me and my parents, is a holiday of three people and a capon, the turkey’s smaller cousin.
It’s always difficult knowing you’re an expensive plane ticket away from birthdays and funerals, always hard to watch your cousins grow up in photographs and not in person. Which is why it was truly wonderful to celebrate the Fête de Famille on the weekend before Thanksgiving for the first time that I can think of. It’s the closest I’ve come to having the typical American Thanksgiving experience.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope you’re all enjoying the break, eating too much, and getting some rest in!
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