Ethnic Thanksgiving, what does that mean? Well I’m considered ethnic, at least according to the bubble I had to fill in on my ACTs, so I guess that makes my Thanksgiving experiences a case-study in ethnic Thanksgiving celebrations.

Thanksgiving in my Korean-American home solidified for me the things that made me who I was, Korean and American.

If you were to look at my family’s thanksgiving table, it’d have your Norman Rockwell staples. The juicy turkey, piping hot stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes with lump-free gravy, and the cranberry sauce still shaped like the can it came out of. Oh, but that pungent odor that attacked your nostrils – that’s the one of four types of kimchi, a spicy cabbage, surrounding the sushi platter right next to the turkey.

Forks and knives are at each place setting, but hardly used as chopsticks serve as better weapons to reach and attack the mounds of food across the table. Grace is said in Korean and English, for us second generation grandchildren and other non-Korean neighbors and relatives who had married into our bizarre eat-kimchi-with-everything world.

As the meal progresses and family members are brought up to speed on what is going on in one another’s lives, stories begin to flow out of our parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents mouths.

Some stories are old favorites, but every year new stories surface, usually to the expense of someone’s pride or once respectable standing. Every now and then though a historical gem would slip and we’d be given a chance to see what our parents and grandparents went through to not only survive, but also thrive in America.

Tales of week-long sea voyages across the Pacific Ocean and first-time plane rides, language barriers, culture shock and adaptation gave us a glimpse of what they went through.

When you think about the participants of the first Thanksgiving, they were very similar to my parents, grandparents and other first-generation immigrants. After all, the Thanksgiving story is a story of immigration: people finding a new home, starting a new life and relating to new neighbors.

Although my parents and grandparents may not have had to deal with the 17th century living conditions the pilgrims did, they came to the ethno-phobic shores of immigration laws and racism in the 20th century. Different types, but nonetheless trials and obstacles that had to be overcome for the futures of their families.

I am no historian, but I bet my Thanksgiving dinner was much like the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, well minus the kimchi and sashimi of course. Families sharing a meal, taking the time to step back and reflect on the historic journey they had taken together. At times reminiscing about where they had come from, but ultimately concluding that they had come in hopes of a better life for generations to come.

So what’s so different about my ethnic Korean-American Thanksgiving? Well the food, but in the end, just like the pilgrims it is a day to share in plenty, reflect and give thanks for all that those before us have gone through.

Jonie Seo is a staff writer for the Daily Illini and a junior in Communications.