Thanksgiving is a national holiday commonly celebrated in North America, where families and friends gather every year on the fourth Thursday of November to enjoy an extravagant, plentiful meal to express gratitude and give thanks for the blessings they have received in the past year.
With stuffed roasted turkey, jammy cranberry sauce and hearty mashed potatoes on the table, the holiday is celebrated nowadays with the significance of giving thanks and as an annual gathering among friends and family. However, the holiday started off as a way to celebrate the autumn harvest of crops, when English colonists first arrived in North America in 1620.
Although Hong Kong has the highest amount of public holidays in the world, as citizens both celebrate a mix of Western holidays and traditional Chinese holidays, Thanksgiving is usually overlooked and is seen as a combination or a prelude to Christmas celebrations.
“I would say that there have been more people here celebrating over the past few years. But as we invite some of our local Hong Kong friends to our annual Thanksgiving dinners, some of them tell us that they’ve never had Thanksgiving dinners before, so I don’t think it’s as big here as the United States,” says Kaleigh W, an American expat living in Hong Kong.
She also says that Thanksgiving dinners are often sold at a high price at restaurants in Hong Kong, and the holiday is mostly celebrated by the small community of American expats who have moved and settled into the city.
Thanksgiving’s controversial history: do Hong Kongers know much about it?
Thanksgiving first originated in 1620 when Plymouth colonists from England and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast. Nowadays, scholars argue that the holiday masked the oppression in the relationship of these two groups, as there is an increasing disparity between reality, and how the historical event was presented to the public and taught to children.
Activists and scholars argued that Thanksgiving remains controversial due to the long-standing bloodshed between colonists from England and Native Americans. They believed that further justice should be given to Native Americans, as this holiday continues to mask the oppression they have faced from European colonists.
Wampanoag, a Native American tribe, had occupied their land until it was seized by Plymouth colonists, newly settled English colonists arriving to establish control over their territory. This conflict resulted in the death of millions of Native Americans.
Moreover, some historians have found that before Europeans arrived in America, Thanksgiving was first celebrated by Native Americans who had a tradition in commemorating the fall harvest.
As for how many Hong Kong citizens know about the holiday, Jackson Cheung, a high school student in an international school in Hong Kong, says his school teachers or his curriculum doesn’t offer much education on the history and significance of Thanksgiving or Christmas.
“Some of my American classmates celebrate it, but apart from them, no one knows much about the holiday or its significance because we don’t have celebrations of it at school. We mostly celebrate Christmas instead and only if you do research yourself, you will know about Thanksgiving,” he said.
How is Thanksgiving celebrated in Hong Kong?
“How I would explain it to Hong Kong locals is that Thanksgiving is kind of like a version of their Chinese New Year,” Kaleigh says.
“In Canada, I think many Canadians know what the overall significance is behind Thanksgiving, and I do believe that expats from Canada and the US and those who are familiar with our cultures and practices know, but I can’t say with certainty if everyone celebrates it here,” says Timon Johnson, a Canadian who is currently a masters student at the University of Hong Kong.
Thanksgiving meal packages are often sold in high-end restaurants or hotel restaurants in Hong Kong. Flint at JW Marriott Hotel is serving a four-course Thanksgiving lunch or dinner for HK$980, while Mandarin Oriental and Rosewood Hong Kong are providing a Thanksgiving takeaway package, in which customers have to order online to have their meals delivered straight to their door.
Popular chains around Hong Kong like Starbucks are also having Thanksgiving specials on their menu. Roast dinner will be available in Hong Kong as Thanksgiving approaches, along with their range of holiday-themed drinks including their Salted Pretzel Cocoa Oat Milk Frappuccino, Gingerbread, Peppermint and Toffee Nut Crunch collection already available to order.
Western-style bakeries are also releasing holiday season specials on their menu. Bakehouse, a popular artisanal bakery chain in Hong Kong, has mini pumpkin tarts and raspberry frangipane tarts available to order as a bite-sized way for local HongKongers to get a taste of Thanksgiving.
Butter, another Western-style bakery in Hong Kong, now has pumpkin pie, Tennessee whiskey caramel pecan pie and banana chocolate bundt cake available on their holiday season menu also for online ordering.
Black Friday is arguably a larger holiday in Hong Kong compared to Thanksgiving. Several large retail companies such as Nike, Adidas, Dyson, Amazon, Sephora and Zalora are all having massive sales on November 29th, the day after Thanksgiving.