Linda Ahnert
In 1968, I was a student at the Sorbonne and on November 28th, I wrote home to my parents: “Thanksgiving without turkey!! It’s 10:00 p.m. here which means it’s 4:00 p.m. at home and you guys are probably stuffed from eating all that delicious food.”
I continued, “As my special gastronomic treat today, I bought a bottle of real American orange juice—all the way from Florida! I received your card this morning and showed it to all the kids so they wouldn’t forget what Pilgrims and turkeys look like.”
A bit of explanation for those who don’t know what life was like way back in the 20th century. In those Digital Dark Ages, there were no personal computers, no cell phones, and no emails. When we left home to study abroad for a year, our means of communication with family and friends back in the U.S.A. were hand-written letters airmailed back and forth across the Atlantic.
I would write home faithfully once a week to describe everything I was experiencing in “la belle et douce France.” For someone who loved the language and literature, living in France was like a homecoming in a certain sense—all the places I had read about and dreamt of, I was now seeing.
I would cut through the Luxembourg Gardens to attend morning lectures (inhaling the aroma of bread baking as I passed boulangeries along the way.) Afternoon language classes were held in a building a few blocks from the Seine and I could look across and see Notre-Dame.
And by November of 1968, I had been in France for six months and had seen not just Paris but had travelled all over the country— Normandy, the Loire Valley, Grenoble and the French Alps, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. I didn’t dance “sur le pont d’Avignon,” but I did walk on it.
Mais oui, I was loving my year abroad. But that Thanksgiving morning in 1968, I woke up with a severe case of mal du pays. I was feeling very sorry for myself thinking of Turkey Day back home in Connecticut.
I missed being in the kitchen chopping onions and celery for the stuffing. Not to mention the tantalizing aroma of the turkey roasting for hours and my mom’s pecan pie. I grew misty-eyed thinking of my parents and dear family friends, who always spent Thanksgiving with us.
Then a miracle happened on the Boulevard Raspail.
I stopped at the kiosk on the corner to pick up the International Herald Tribune. A few minutes later, I was reading for the first time Art Buchwald’s classic column in which he facetiously explains our all-American holiday of Thanksgiving to the French.
He does this with his usual humor and by mangling the French language. The article was first published in 1952 and thus began the tradition of reprinting it every year on “Le Jour de Merci Donnant,” as Buchwald dubbed it.
Buchwald starts off by relating how the Pèlerins (Pilgrims) came to the New World where they could eat dinde (turkey) to their hearts’ delight and continues merrily on from there. He even treats the reader to a new spin on the Pilgrim love triangle of Priscilla Mullens, John Alden, and Miles Standish (who Buchwald explains is known as Kilomètres Deboutish in France.)
Reading Buchwald’s column was exactly what I needed to snap me out of my homesickness funk on that Thanksgiving Day in 1968. It is such a perfect spoof for Americans, who love France and the French language. And voilà, before you knew it, I was laughing out loud.
Buchwald concluded his piece by noting that on the fourth Thursday of November, Americans sit down at tables overflowing with tasty dishes and “for the only time during the year eat better than the French do.”
So Happy Thanksgiving and Bon Appétit!
Editor’s Note: Linda Ahnert is a resident of Old Lyme and former Arts Editor at the now-shuttered ‘Main Street News.’ She is a long-time docent at the Florence Griswold Museum and has volunteered for numerous local art organizations.
LYME-OLD LYME — The 
OLD LYME — The annual Community Service of Thanksgiving, organized by the faith communities of Lyme and Old Lyme, will take place at