My Thanksgiving is Wherever I Give Thanks

Spending Thanksgiving in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving is strange, tender thing. The world around you keeps moving as if it’s just another Thursday, while inside, you’re carrying a day that feels a bit softer and fuller, as though it’s more meaningful than the calendar suggests.

And over time, I’ve grown to appreciate that contrast.

Before I ever moved to Mexico, my life was already a patchwork quilt of places. I’m a Brit by birth, but the universe apparently thought one citizenship wasn’t enough. I moved to Louisiana as an older child, back to England in my preteens, back to the Bayou State a few years later, back again to England after college, then once more to Sportsman’s Paradise for eleven years before finally landing in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, just shy of five years ago.

I’ve lived in so many other places around the globe, as well, that sometimes I feel like my accent is an ongoing identity crisis.

My holiday traditions are layered, braided, and lovingly confused. Think tea and biscuits alongside sweet tea and the other kind of biscuits, Boxing Day next to Mardi Gras, and Guy Fawkes with a side of gumbo in a bento box (because yep, there’s a bit of Japan in my life, too, among others)!

But the US of A’s Thanksgiving?

That one became mine.

Somewhere along the transatlantic hopscotch of my life, this very American holiday rooted itself in my heart. Maybe because it had nothing to do with my nationality, or because it offered something universally human; a pause for gratitude, connection, warmth.

Owning Thanksgiving as part of me, despite my very international blueprint, makes me exceedingly, unexpectedly happy.

So when I moved to Mexico and the country around me treated Thanksgiving like any other Thursday, I was determined to carry it with me anyway.

Mexico doesn’t change just because the fourth Thursday of November rolls around. Street vendors still set up early. Families still gather in plazas. Mariachi still echoes from cantinas. Life unfolds with very little awareness that my internal calendar is glowing with significance.

And yet, that’s kind of the beauty, because Thanksgiving doesn’t rely on decorations or store displays. It doesn’t require collective participation. Its magic comes from the meaning you bring to it.

When you take away the societal soundtrack like the commercials, the grocery store frenzy, the pumpkin-spiced everything, you’re left with the purest version of the holiday. You’re left with gratitude in its simplest form, and a day you choose to infuse with intention.

Living abroad has a way of stripping holidays down until all you’re left with is the heart of them. And the heart of Thanksgiving? It travels astonishingly well.

It wasn’t always graceful. My first year in Mexico, I believed Thanksgiving only counted if I replicated it perfectly. Every dish, every flavour, every nostalgic detail. Even if Mexico had absolutely no intention of cooperating.

I’ll never forget my first Thanksgiving here. I found a single imported box of Stove Top stuffing at a speciality store. It was priced like a luxury handbag, but I bought it anyway. That dusty little box felt like a piece of home; like the key to transforming my casa in Mexico into an American Thanksgiving mirage.

And then I burned it.

Not overcooked or slightly toasted, but a gluey, smoky, unrecognisable lump of sadness.

The tears were immediate and dramatic. There I was, a British-American-Mexican-adjacent gal, crying over a $17 box of stuffing because it represented something so much bigger than breadcrumbs.

But once the tears dried and I scraped the charred remains into the bin, I realised what I was actually grieving.

It wasn’t the food.

It was the feeling.

I was trying desperately to recreate the emotional anchor of a holiday that had become mine through years of movement, blending, rebuilding, and belonging everywhere and nowhere at once.

That was the turning point.

Authenticity wasn’t in the menu. It was in the meaning.

One lovely, little known thing about Mexico is that it absolutely has turkey. You can find it in stores, in restaurants, in foreigner-run pop-up buffets. All the traditional trimmings are available if you want them.

But the longer I live abroad, the less I chase a photocopy of Thanksgiving.

Maybe I’ll get turkey this year. Maybe I’ll get birria. Maybe I’ll get a simple stadium hot dog, because I’ll be doing one of my favourite things to do. I’ll be spending Thanksgiving at a baseball game in Guadalajara. And honestly, the sound of a holiday hot dog has a certain charm.

Traditions don’t break when the ingredients change. They simply adapt to the landscape of your life.

Travelling in Mexico for Thanksgiving has become my favourite way to celebrate. It requires me to look for gratitude, not just fall into it. I don’t have the parade on TV, the kitchen chaos, or the familiar family soundtrack. Instead, I gather the holiday from the world around me.

It’s in the woman at the mercado handing me a slice of mango. In the barista greeting me with a sincere buen día. In the colours of the tianguis, bright enough to feel like a festival. In the golden warmth of the afternoon sun. In the laughter shared with a stranger. In the simple joy of being somewhere that reminds me how alive life is; of how alive I am.

These are my Thanksgiving moments now. They’re far less orchestrated but deeper somehow.

There’s something quietly liberating about being in the minority within your immediate surroundings while celebrating a holiday. There are no expectations, no comparisons, no pressure, and no scripts.

There’s just you, the meaning you choose to give the day, and the people you choose to share it with.

And maybe it makes sense that Thanksgiving is the one holiday that stuck with me through all my moves and relocations. It isn’t about a country. It isn’t about a religion. It isn’t about a specific culture. It’s about gratitude. And that, perhaps more than any other tradition, belongs to everyone.

With every move, every country, and every version of myself, Thanksgiving has somehow stayed. It’s become a compass point. It’s a sort of yearly pause that asks me to reflect on where I am, how far I’ve come, and who I’ve become along the way.

Mexico won’t care that it’s Thanksgiving. It won’t pause for me. There won’t be parades, or casseroles, or familiar cues.

But I’ll pause. I’ll reflect. And I’ll celebrate a holiday shaped by everywhere I’ve lived and everything I carry.

Because gratitude doesn’t need a gravy boat dusted off once a year. It doesn’t need tradition. It doesn’t need a nation to recognise it.

It simply needs to be given attention. And I can do that anywhere.

Even seated among strangers at a stadium in Mexico, hot dog in hand, smiling into a life that brought me all this way.