How International Students Celebrate Thanksgiving

By Bella Agnello

While many Cedarville University students traveled home to spend Thanksgiving with their families, some students had to make other plans. For international students living several time zones away from their family, they needed to find a way to celebrate the holiday without them.

Thanksgiving is traditionally an American holiday which remembers the friendship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag people, and their first successful harvest. However, even without the same historical significance, the holiday is celebrated all around the world as a time to be grateful for the things that happened throughout the year.

Senior Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism majors Ian Chan and Jernice Toh are both from Malaysia. Their whole lives, they celebrated Thanksgiving with their families. Since coming to Cedarville, they needed to find a new way to celebrate the holiday.

“Back home, we didn’t have a particular day that we would have Thanksgiving,” Toh said. “I know a lot of other families do sometimes, but not my family. It’s not a big thing. So, I think coming here and seeing everyone going away for Thanksgiving break, going back to their homes and eating a bunch of really good food was really exciting for me. My freshman year, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew that Americans ate turkeys and stuff, but that was kind of it.”

Since coming to the States, Chan has spent Thanksgiving with various friends’ families. This year, he spent the holiday in another friend’s home near Cedarville.

“It’s always been people offering and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to come home with me for Thanksgiving?’ and I’ll follow them back because I can’t go back home,” Chan said. “It would take me two days to go back home and two days to come back. It’s just really nice and very comforting for me – and especially my parents – knowing that during breaks when the campus is closed, I can go somewhere and spend the holiday.”

Her freshman year, Toh’s friend invited her over to her grandparents’ home near Cedarville. Since then, she has spent Thanksgiving with the same family.

“The family went around in a circle and said what we were thankful for and I thought that was really cute,” Toh said. “And I felt really included even though I didn’t know the grandparents or the parents at all.”

This year, Toh received an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her housemate’s family in Michigan. However, she was still able to spend Thanksgiving lunch at her friend’s grandparents’ house. Even though her time with the family was shortened, she still looked forward to participating in the same Thanksgiving traditions.

Toh reflected on her time at her friend’s grandparents’ house over the past few years.

“We played Uno, Clue – it was a lot of games,” Toh said. “We watched a bunch of Christmas movies, too. The day after Thanksgiving, we were like, ‘Okay, now it’s Christmas,’ so we just watched a bunch of Christmas movies, ate a lot, played games and chatted.”

Psychology student Martin Kita is in his second year at Cedarville University. In Albania, he never celebrated Thanksgiving and finally learned about the holiday, and all its traditions, when he came to Cedarville. This year, Kita and some of the other Albanian international students were invited to spend Thanksgiving with a family in Columbus, OH.

Kita looked forward to enjoying a Thanksgiving feast surrounded by a group of friends. He also wanted to share the holiday with his family in Albania.

“I definitely want to call them and tell them that I’m grateful for them,” Kita said.

Toh, too, wanted to make sure she called her family on the holiday.

“I haven’t called my parents in three weeks, so I’ve gotta call them soon,” Toh said. “So I’ll just be taking the time to chill and call them.”

Whether or not they celebrated Thanksgiving with their family back home, the holiday holds a special place in each of the international students’ hearts as a time dedicated to thanking God for all the ways he provided for them.

“The biggest thing I’m grateful for is just the opportunity for me to be in a Christian community, that I’m at a school studying something that I want to do in the future, but at the same time making sure that I am well grounded in my beliefs,” Chan said. “I’m just overall thankful for what God has blessed me with and how far he has brought me.”

Bella Agnello is a junior Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism major with a concentration in Journalism. She enjoys thrifting, listening to records and reading classic Russian literature in her spare time.

*Photo provided by Unsplash