Over 50 students and UCL staff got together on the afternoon on November 13th to learn about holidays, traditions, and feasts around the world celebrating fall, harvest, family, or giving thanks. Alongside Thanksgiving favorites, including turkey, corn bread, greens and pies, the dishes on our holiday table featured Caribbean jerk chicken with rice, beans, and vegetables, Chinese mooncakes, Russian apple cakes, Indian rice and carrot puddings, and other delicacies. After filling (and refilling) our plates and learning to say “thank you” in several languages, we embarked on a tour of the world spotlighting holidays and festivals in China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Kurdistan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and United States. We learned a lot about various holidays and food associated with them.

Watch a video about the event on Animoto or YouTube.

Everyone enjoyed the celebration. One student mentioned that it “would be great if you [the libraries] had a theme like today’s every week.” Well, we cannot promise that we can get together every week, but we’ll definitely be thinking about future events. Topics suggested by students for the future include songs and sports from different cultures; library staff started thinking about an international game night. If you have ideas for future events and would like to help make them happen, please let us know!

We would like the tradition of giving thanks and sharing food and fun to become a UC Libraries annual event.

Many thanks to all the speakers, volunteers and attendees from the event planning team: Meshia Anderson, Susan Banoun, Mikaila Corday, Olya Hart, Ted Young, and Holly Zhang.

We extend out Thanksgiving greetings to the whole UC community.