Thanksgiving at an Italian-American Family's House
Thanksgiving for most people consists of turkey, football, and family; for this Italian-American family it is no different. The action occurred in the basement of the house of a baker. There are approximately 30 people here; most of them fall in the range of 50+ years of age. There are about 5 young adults (ages 18-23) and 4 children. For the majority of the time, I couldn't understand what the older generation was talking about because they were speaking to each other in Italian; asking one of them, though, most of the talk was about gossip.
Most of the newer generations spoke only in English; they talked about school and bands. The youngest group sat at the kiddie's table and the adults sat at a long joined table for dinner. The dinner included a good variety, including turkey, ham, rice, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, green beans, dinner rolls, salad, sausage, and two variations of sweet potatoes. The table during dinner was no less noisy than if they had not been eating dinner, with what seemed like at least one person yelling at the top of their lungs at any one time. There was a pretty clear segregation between the more Americanized, newer generation and the older generation. The newer generation stayed mostly in the television area and ventured out occasionally to play a board game at the opposite end of the dinner table. The newer generation horded old Italian cookies and coffee on the dinner table and talked loudly to each other.
(That's hard for me to make interesting.)
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