Hispanic Public Relations Blog

This Thursday, the entire nation takes a breath to celebrate Thanksgiving, a distinctly U.S. tradition. It’s a time when families across the nation gather together and give thanks for those people and things near and dear.  While the vast majority of the country will celebrate by eating turkey and watching football, there are many that won’t celebrate that way.

Some Hispanics, especially more recent immigrants, don’t celebrate Thanksgiving for lack of awareness and understanding.  Then there are those Hispanic families who celebrate the tradition but add their own Latin flavor to the feast.

According to a General Mills study done a few years ago, about 15 percent of Hispanic families in the U.S. don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, nor other American holidays like Halloween and the Fourth of July.  The majority of these less acculturated Hispanics said they would welcome learning more about the holidays to enrich their lives in America.  The majority (55%) of those polled who said they did know about these traditional American holidays said it took about two years or more to learn.

Of course, whether one understands the Thanksgiving tradition or not, for most, it’s still a day off. For Hispanic families, it’s one more opportunity to get together with family and celebrate.   In fact, Latinos tend to get together with family more often than non-Hispanic whites, so the family reunion aspect that is unique to many families about Thanksgiving is often less of a novelty to Latinos.

For many, though, the traditional Thanksgiving menu is a novelty.  Turkey is not a typical dish in many Latin American countries.  Mexican families in the U.S. often celebrate the day instead with ham, tamales (corn husks usually filled with meat or sweets) , and pozole, a soup with pork and vegetables.   Other alternatives include pernil, a roasted pig, or a seafood dish such as paella.

Even among families that cook turkey and stuffing, there’s still a touch of Latin flavor.  Latina blogger Rebecca Cuevas, who describes herself as a half-Latina half-European American, describes her family Thanksgiving as “turkey with stuffing, but the stuffing was seasoned with green pepper, adobo, chorizo and sometimes made of cornbread and tortillas.”  Former Univision anchor and chef Denise Oller writes that her family Thanksgiving usually includes black beans, white rice and yucca as side dishes for the turkey.

In Puerto Rico, where Thanksgiving has been adopted by many since the island became a U.S. territory, the turkey is roasted over a spit, the way one would roast a suckling pig, creating a popular dish called pavochon.

Some food companies have recognized Latinos’ unique Thanksgiving tastes.  Butterball’s website includes recipes for turkey with chorizo cornbread stuffing,  and their Turkey Talk-Line, a hotline for cooks preparing for Thanksgiving, includes a bilingual Latina turkey expert, Diana Jimenez .

QueRicaVida.com, General Mills’ Spanish-language lifestyle site, offers more traditional recipes for the less acculturated, turkey with or without chorizo stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.  Nestle’s Very Best Baking website meanwhile provides a recipe for pumpkin flan, a popular Latino substitute for pumpkin pie.

For many Hispanics, food is as important a part of culture as language.  Latinos’ Thanksgiving dinners are one more sign of how Hispanics adopt American culture and blend it with their own.  You may think they’re eating the same turkey as everyone, but you just might taste the chorizo as soon as you take a bite.

Tags: Acculturation, Butterball, culture, Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, Nestle, Que Rica Vida, Thanksgiving

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