RECIPES: Find The Latino Road To A Thanksgiving Celebration (2024)

FAQs

How do Latinos celebrate Thanksgiving? ›

Just like in the United States, a festive Latino Thanksgiving typically centers around a bountiful and delicious meal. Families gather to enjoy a feast that often includes roasted turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes.

While some celebrate with the staples of their northern friends, many homes turn to everything from tamales and pozole to mole and chiles en nogada, making Mexican Thanksgiving food a culinary fiesta that reflects the country's diverse gastronomic heritage.

Traditional foods include turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. Many people serve pie for dessert at the end of the meal. Popular pie flavors are pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, and apple.

Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year. Americans generally believe that their Thanksgiving is modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (Pilgrims) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag people.

Some Latino dinners do include turkey, however most times is not the same turkey you know since your childhood. Instead of using the traditional Stove Top stuffing, Latinos stuff their turkey with ground beef, chorizo, bacon, and bits of pork. You get the best of both worlds.

While Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Latin America, many Hispanics in the U.S. feel a special connection to the holiday and the day of gratitude. Apart from the traditional Thanksgiving spread, Hispanics usually include traditional dishes from their native cultures into the holiday.

The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving in the United States is Thanksgiving dinner (informally called turkey dinner), a large meal generally centered on a large roasted turkey.

Millions of people across the United States will sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving meal, including turkey, potatoes, squash, corn, and cranberries. These foods have become synonymous with Thanksgiving, but how did they end up on tables from Maine to California?

The concept of Thanksgiving can be traced back to the Holy Bible, where it represents a fundamental aspect of God's people. In both the Old and New Testaments, Thanksgiving emphasizes gratitude and praise to God for His many blessings.

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists from England and the Native American Wampanoag people shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.

Why is Thanksgiving on Thursday? ›

Among the Puritan colonists, Thursday may have been tradition to distance the event from the Sabbath day. Thursday was also a typical day for lectures in New England, which may have contributed to the reason Thanksgiving is a Thursday.

Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico

Celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, a Puerto Rican Thanksgiving meal includes turkey. It also consists of roasted pork, plantain dishes, rice and beans. After dinner, Puerto Ricans also embrace the shopping frenzy known as Black Friday.

Pork is a cuban staple at any holiday. While traditional Thanksgiving is never missing a roasted turkey, no Cuban holiday is complete without a good mojo pork. A Cuban classic, mojo pork is the major player at every Thanksgiving table, overpowering even the finest of turkeys.

Thanksgiving is not officially part of the traditional Dominican festive calendar. However, Dominicans who have emigrated to the United States (and Canada) have incorporated the celebration into their family customs. Families in the Dominican Republic with US/Canadian connections also celebrate Thanksgiving.

It's a full month of celebrations, marked with family feasts and lots of piñatas. Starting on 12 December and lasting until 6 January, Christmas celebrations in Mexico have their own flair. There are candlelit processions, elaborate nativity scenes, Spanish Christmas carols, dancing and fireworks.