My Afro-American Thanksgiving, by Matt Shirley

I’m fairly used to not being home during holidays. In college, when the other kids were packing up their parents’ Jeep Grand Cherokees to return to the friendly confines of their homes for Christmas, I was the one standing at my dorm window, wistfully looking out at them through slowly falling snow, with a single Anti-Littering-Indian tear rolling down my cheek.

Christmas break was spent wandering campus alone, startling deer that had converged on the grounds while everyone was away, and only getting 2 days of heavenly freedom to celebrate Jesus’s birth. New Year’s in an airport, a game on Valentine’s Day, my 21st birthday in an alcohol-less hotel room in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, watching SportsCenter and eating peanut M&Ms: all normal for me. And Thanksgiving, the holiday we celebrate by making our grade-schoolers construct cardboard cornucopias and stereotype Indians, was no different. No high school reunions, no trips to Grandma’s house, no endless days of non-responsibility, and no family.

College basketball’s a bitch.

But besides supplying many Calvin and Hobbes-ian ‘character-building’ moments, those Thanksgiving absences also became the fruits and the grains for MY Thanksgiving narrative cornucopia. They helped me figure out what I was really missing by being thousands of miles from home.

In 2001, I had my first Afro-American Thanksgiving. Or in non-politically correct terms: my first Blacksgiving. Late November found my teammates and I stuck in the snow and cloud capital of the contiguous United States (Hamilton, New York) alternating between being bored/tired/cold and cold/bored/tired. It is not uncommon for college basketball teams to travel to tournaments during Thanksgiving break, but this year, the holiday fell between home games against Northern Arizona (10 minutes, 2 turnovers) and Oral Roberts (5 minutes, 4 points, 1 personal foul. Yessss). Since we were in familiar territory, we were left to our own devices in terms of securing a place to give our thanks. A few suckers accepted invitations to attend the snorefest that was our coach’s dinner, a few foreigners opted for a Big Mac Thanksgiving, and rest of the team and I went to Josh’s.

My friend and teammate Josh was black. It was common in those days for my roommate Andrew and I to spend many an evening in Josh’s dark apartment, drinking King Cobras and playing Fifa World Cup, but it was quite a rarity for Josh to hold dinner parties. In fact, I don’t think Josh had anything to do with the invitations at all. I suppose it’s likely that the only reason Josh was hosting Thanksgiving dinner was because his family, a very jovial and generous group of people, had driven in from Cleveland to spend the week with him, take in two sparsely attended basketball games, and cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for their beloved son.

Upon arrival, Andrew and I mingled with the Clevelandians for a few minutes before joining them in ribbing Josh about his deficient leaping ability, a trait that was atypical amongst his racial peers on our team. It wasn’t long before it was time to eat. Our motley group quickly gathered around the table, where one of the elder members of Josh’s family led us in a prayer—a prayer during which I tried really hard not to do the here-is-the-church-here-is-the-steeple thing. Then, the food was unveiled. Like a normal person, I had imagined cartoonishly vast heaps of turkey, surrounded by comparably heaped plates of mashed potatoes and green beans and stuffing and cranberry sauce; a veritable bonanza of Thanksgiving comestibles. But when the tin foil was lifted, that’s not what I saw. In place of turkey, there were ribs. Instead of mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese. Green beans: no. Collared greens: yes. I can’t recollect what was for dessert but it sure as shit wasn’t pumpkin pie. I was disappointed, to say the least, but did my best to suppress this disappointment and to, in spite of that disappointment, remain thankful in the spirit of the holiday’s namesake.

After dinner, Josh’s mother and grandmother regaled us with tales of youthful hijinks in an effort to embarrass their boy, as Andrew and I exchanged knowing glances, trying to tell one another a) how awkward we felt and b) how hungry we still were. Only minutes passed though, before we had to take our leave, trudge back up the hill through the heavy New York snow, and don our practice gear for another holiday workout.

Flash back, to the year previous. I’m in Flagstaff, Arizona with my teammates again, on one of those holiday excursions I spoke of. We are playing games in Arizona, rather than somewhere within a 2100-mile radius of our upstate New York College, because the coaching staff takes particular care to schedule a “home” game for each of our players. It stands to reason then, of course, that one of the members of the 2000 Colgate Basketball team is from The Grand Canyon State. Not so. Unfortunately, our Arizona boy, a person I never met, had decided to transfer to UC-Davis the year before, and we were left to play games in Arizona for nearly no reason at all. (Sidenote: my ‘home’ game was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just a quick 4 hour 19 minute jaunt down Highway 169 for my parents. Bastards.) After taking a drubbing at the hands of the Sun Devils of Arizona State (DNP-CD), we trekked through the red rocks of Sedona up to the snow-capped peaks of Flagstaff to get spanked by Northern Arizona University (6 minutes, 1 point, 1 assist.). Flagstaff was, and presumably still is, a beautiful place. And let the record show that I utilize no sarcasm when I speak of Flagstaff’s allure.

While in Flagstaff, we enjoyed our Thanksgiving just like the pilgrims did: in an upscale hotel overlooking Arizona’s leg of the Rocky Mountains. Decked out in our red jumpsuit travel gear, we feasted on the finest Thanksgiving food Flagstaff had to offer and giddily discussed our fortune of not having to even set foot on a basketball court that day. Later we sleepily retired to our rooms to watch football and hibernate on our queen-sized beds, beneath a painting of either a vase of flowers or a marching band, depending on how you looked at it.

When comparing these scenarios with a perfect, utopia-like Thanksgiving, they both fall quite short. But it’s easy to see that the latter is much closer to the typical Thanksgiving ideal than the former. And in many ways, it was simply better. Flagstaff, Arizona is better than Hamilton, New York. Mashed potatoes and green beans are better than macaroni and cheese and collared greens. And the following equation is almost always true:

No practice > Practice

But even when considering the merits of the Flagstaff Thanksgiving, and the faults of the Afro-American Thanksgiving, there is one commodity that outweighs all of the others and vaults Blacksgiving to the top of my enjoyment list.

Family.

It’s weird to not be around family during Thanksgiving; it just doesn’t feel right. And even a family I’m not used to—a family from a different place, a family with a different culture, a family that cooks different foods, a family with different stories, different smells, different hairstyles, different views on Jesus Christ, different aspirations, different susceptibilities to sickle-cell anemia—is better than no family at all. And for that reason, I will be truly missing my family this Thanksgiving.