Intersections: Sitting down to tradition and reflection
Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday — on the one hand, I dream all year long about the food I will come to eat on the last Thursday of November, even as a vegetarian. On the other hand, the fact that it simplifies and paints over the pain, genocide and conquest that Native Americans endured by colonists makes me nervous and uncomfortable.
It’s a thought that perhaps lays at the forefront of my mind during this time because of my own cultural and historical ties to acts of violence and discrimination.
I often alternate between how I am going to savor every last drop of candied yams and thinking about Alcatraz Island, where every year thousands travel to on Thanksgiving in order to celebrate their Native-American heritage and identity on a day alternatively known as the Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony.
Despite its sordid history, I can’t help but love this holiday. I can’t think of another day that celebrates the concept of the immigrant, despite its oversimplification of it, in such a great way. Sadly, I think that message often becomes lost for many Americans, whom I partly do not blame considering the magnitude of good food on tables across the country on Thursday.
Thanksgiving is also a fusion holiday for many immigrants, who include their own, traditional dishes next to the turkey and cranberry sauce. It’s quite typical to visit a Greek household and find spanakopita on the table, or an Iranian house and find bejeweled rice. There is no shame in mixing gravy with some tabbouleh or having pupusas with a side of stuffing.
One particular dish I’m attempting to include and revive this year is a traditional Armenian delicacy known as “Ghapama,” which consists of a pumpkin stuffed with raisins, apricots, walnuts, cinnamon, honey and rice.
It’s a dish that does not get made often, but one that coincidentally has an entire song dedicated to it by perhaps the most popular Armenian-American singer, Harout Pamboukjian. The entire song is about preparing the pumpkin and coming to find that 100 people have shown up to eat it, because that’s how good it really is.
Everyone knows the lyrics and most young Armenian Americans probably only know the dish, or at least have heard the word “Ghapama” because of the song.
But I think it’s too great to be lost inside the confines of a song routinely played at weddings and other celebrations. It needs to be celebrated in all its glory and added to the lexicon of autumnal food, especially given how easy it is to make.
So I’m bringing it out this Thanksgiving, in hopes it can give my family a starting point to talk about other dishes and traditions that have been lost over time, due to war or genocide or immigration.
In many ways, the “Ghapama” represents all of this. Not many people make it, I couldn’t even tell you exactly what “Ghapama” literally means, though I’ve heard it is a reference to cooking something in a covered pot. But it is a very small part of Armenian identity and heritage overshadowed by headline-grabbing news and political moves.
There is so much more to one culture and one people than a singular event in history, or the stereotypes many of us are guilty of using.
Making a conscious effort to discover what defines us rather than relying on surface-level chatter to form our understanding of each other is necessary, because oversimplification of heritage found on the Western or Eastern side of the world never has done any particular good.
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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.