San José State students who may not celebrate Thanksgiving had the opportunity to experience different festivities Monday at the Diaz Compean Student Union for Global Connections’s “Friendsgiving.”
SJSU Global Connections serves students who want to learn more about the world through weekly meetings linking them with information about cultures and people from around the world, according to its web page.
Global Connections hosted the event to give international students an opportunity to celebrate friendship, community and tradition, according to its event web page.
The term “Friendsgiving,” is used to describe a gathering of friends to eat a large meal on or near Thanksgiving and was coined in 2007 through a Twitter post, according to Merriam-Webster.
The harvest is celebrated around the world, including holidays like the Rice Harvest Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Yam Festival, Sukkoth, and Pongal, according to a Britannica web page.
The same web page also says these holidays are commonly held in countries far from the US, including Indonesia, China, Taiwan, Israel, Nigeria, Vietnam and many other countries.
Sanya Mandhyan, a second-year data science student from India, said she celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time last year.
“I got some good Thanksgiving food, which (was) interesting because I've never had proper Thanksgiving food,” Mandhyan said. “It was sort of new, I did not know how things worked, but it was pretty fun.”
Although the Friendsgiving event was made to primarily serve students from different cultures, including those who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in their home country, it is not uncommon for the holiday to be celebrated by immigrants, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
The survey found that 74% of immigrants who had been in the U.S. for a decade or less said they celebrated Thanksgiving in comparison to the 93% of Americans born in the U.S. who said they celebrate the holiday.
“Who doesn't like a holiday? ... I have felt very (included) and (people) have treated me very well,” Mandhyan said. “I am a part of this club in SJSU ... and they've invited me over for Thanksgiving this Thursday, so I'm gonna go there and experience actual Thanksgiving again. I'm pretty excited about that.”
Dimple Mulchandani, a biomedical engineering graduate student also from India, said holidays in the U.S. are diverse.
“(In) the U.S., there are people from different cultures and regions. So you'll always find somebody of a similar culture,” Mulchandani said. “It's okay to celebrate other festivals because then (you) get to celebrate a festival ... In fact, you get more culturally aware about Thanksgiving and other festivals.”
Keri Toma Loehrer, international programs manager at SJSU International Student and Scholar Services, said Global Connections is a great opportunity for international students to build connections.
“For Friendsgiving specifically, we wanted to do something to bring the community together, but also share a little bit of American traditions with our international students, but also other cultural traditions,” Loehrer said. “A lot of cultures celebrate the harvest. So gathering together around the idea of harvest and community gatherings is why we did Friendsgiving.”
Thanksgiving is also not an exclusively American holiday. It is also known to be celebrated in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Liberia, Saint Lucia, the Philippines and more, according to the World Population Review.
Loehrer said she does celebrate Thanksgiving and uses the holiday as a way to cherish the people in her life.
“If I'm home, it's being with family (and) taking a moment to appreciate things,” Loehrer said. “Sometimes we don't do that often enough. Since I've been living away from home for many years now, it's more about your chosen family and friends who are like family, so that's what it is for me now.”
