Russian Thanksgiving - 1999

Photo: An Orthodox chapel in downtown Ekaterinburg, pictured in early autumn, before the first snowfall


Today there will be three posts, all on the theme of celebrations. This one is "A Russian Thanksgiving," written on November 28, 1999

On Thanksgiving we were invited to a party at the American consulate, and in the morning I decided to perk up my hair with a hot oil treatment. While thoroughly saturating my hair with oil, I dreamed that the lingering effects of a bad perm would be made less noticeable. After a suitable period of time for the oil to do its best, I prepared to rinse it off. Problem: When I turned the shower on, I found out that we had no cold water.

In Russia there are separate water lines that supply residential buildings with hot and cold water. Sometimes one line or the other is out of service for a few hours or a few days, and you make lifestyle adjustments. For instance, when there's no cold water, you can draw a tub of steaming water and wait for it to be cool enough for a bath. That's what I did on Thanksgiving. And the glunk of oil I had put in my hair spread in the bath water to coat my skin. Huge amounts of soap and shampoo finally got me clean, and a quick hot rinse got rid of the soap and shampoo.

My contribution to the Thanksgiving dinner was to be a pumpkin pie. As I started on it I received a telephone call. Would I mind moving up my first class in the afternoon? We had just had a schedule change (for some reason that has never been adequately explained to me, there's always a new academic schedule half-way through the semester). Instead of teaching at 2:15, the department head wanted me to come in to have the noon "pair" (two 45-minute classes). Well, okay. I could come home after that, put the pie in the oven for an hour, and get back to the university in time for my 4:00 pair of classes.

Tempus fugit, and I didn't have an hour to cook the pie. The microwave came in handy as a way to give the pumpkin filling a head start on heating. When it went into the oven, it got a chance to cook very quickly before I took it into the below-freezing temperature outside, on my way back to the university.

After class I carried the pie and my school papers over to Slava's office, and we set off for the consulate. Slava's driver was sick, so we hailed a "taxi," that is, the second car that passed us on a busy corner. For the equivalent of fifty cents, we got a ride downtown.

Slava estimated the crowd at the consulate to be about 120 people, almost all of them very young. Before dinner they were sipping 7-up and Fanta. There were some harder drinks such as Coca-Cola, which for religious reasons most wouldn't drink. The Mormon missionaries wouldn't touch anything with caffeine, but I heard another missionary wistfully yearn for a cup of coffee.

There were three large tables laden with food, more than even the young Mormon guys could eat. The fare included all the traditional items, with a few Russian specialties such as salmon pirogie and jam torte. The consulate general had had turkeys shipped from Moscow, since there are none to be had in this town. The consulate staff had chipped in to host the party themselves because such frivolities are not chargeable to the office expense budget.

On Saturday we had a second Thanksgiving, this one for Dima, Yulia, her parents, and little Nikita. As usual for a Russian Thanksgiving, I cooked two chickens. A savory bread stuffing seems very strange to Russians, and so I accommodate local tastes by making a very light stuffing with lots of apples and raisins. Also to accommodate local tastes, we started out with caviar canapes.

Thanksgiving may be observed in different ways in different places, but no matter where or how, it's always a wonderful holiday.