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.