My Scottish Thanksgiving

It seemed like a good idea at the time—hosting a full American Thanksgiving in a tiny Scottish house. But as the pieces started to fall into place, I realized just how ‘rash’ my decisions often were.

Like the summer I packed up my ice-blue 1988 Corolla and drove to Boulder, Colorado, after reading an article touting it as the best outdoor town. Never mind that my teaching contact only covered ten months, leaving me unemployed for the summer. I strapped my bike onto the roof rack, stuffed the trunk with clothes, and drove across the country solo. No plan, no job, just pure possibility.

That same impulsive spirit eventually took me to Scotland. I’d read about the Fulbright Teaching Exchange Program and thought, “Why not?” A few applications and months later, I was packing up my life to teach maths (yes, plural) in Forres, a small highland town immortalized by Shakespeare in Macbeth. I was 28—optimistic, clueless, and ready for anything.

That year was full of defining moments: teaching in a foreign school, walking misty highland beaches, and hosting my first and only Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn’t just any Thanksgiving. It was a Scottish Thanksgiving—born of one of my rashest ideas yet.

The plan was simple, or so I thought: invite the entire maths department (nine colleagues plus their partners) to a traditional Thanksgiving feast. Never mind that the house I was staying in had seating for four, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a tiny oven.

The logistics of Thanksgiving, however, were more complicated. Dining tables to seat eighteen? Solved when Phyllis, the Church of Scotland neighbor, convinced the parish to lend me not only tables, but linens and silver, too. And when I stopped by the local butcher shop to place my order for a Thanksgiving turkey, the butcher Macdonald, asked the question I hadn’t considered: “Do you have an oven big enough to bake a twenty-seven-pound turkey?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Nope. Definitely not.”

“It would be best, then, if I cooked it and delivered it,” he said, in the practical, no-nonsense way I’d come to associate with the Scots. “Perhaps with some oatmeal stuffing?”

He wasn’t asking.

When I relayed the story of this extraordinary offer the following day in the carpool, I shared with three male colleagues—all highland natives ranging in ages from mid-forties to early sixties— they howled with laughter. They teased that I, the young blue-eyed blonde Yank, had shamelessly charmed the butcher Macdonald into the home delivery of a stuffed twenty-seven-pound bird. 

It was good-hearted fun. These guys, physics, history, and computer science teachers, were the big brothers and close uncles I never had. They included me in their pub meals over the school lunch hour and invited me around for home-cooked dinners and walks with the dog. They introduced me to their families and wives, who invited me to Scottish country dancing lessons and drinks afterward. They advised me about everything from troublesome students to joining a jogging club and where to get the bike I’d had shipped over and assembled myself checked out. “Just in case I’d missed something important—like brakes.”

When it came time for actual meal planning, after accounting for the seven-hour time zone difference, I went to the front of the house, stood in the drafty entryway, and dialed the ten-digit phone number of my childhood home on a British Telecom rotary phone to call my mom for recipes. Electronic mail wouldn’t become a household thing for two more years. While we had access to the Internet at school, Mom, who still has an AOL account thirty years later, didn’t have email, let alone a personal computer. All the same, I was of the cordless phone generation, and even then, standing in the front entryway to make a telephone call felt a bit Victorian. 

Mom, thrilled to see me making the domestic effort to cook and entertain—an interest she and I did not share—copied the family recipes onto lightweight onion-skin paper and mailed them via international airmail. Three days later, the Royal Mail postman who delivered the mail morning and afternoon by bicycle put it through the letter slot in the front door. 

The rash idea of I think I’ll host a Scottish Thanksgiving was getting complicated. 

This became even more obvious when I went to the local grocer in search of pumpkins. If I thought cooking and mashing an actual pumpkin for pumpkin pie was being resourceful. Imagine my surprise when the grocer suggested I telephone the nearby Royal Air Force base to speak with an American pilot stationed there who might know where I could procure a pumpkin. When I asked the grocer for the name of this pilot, she didn’t have one. “Just ask for the American. They’ll be able to connect you.”

This wasn’t as outlandish an idea as it might’ve seemed before I came to live in Scotland. One day shortly after my arrival, a sudden rainstorm chased me into the backseat of a taxi as I was walking home with groceries. Occupied initially with getting the shopping bags sorted, I suddenly realized that the taxi was en route to the house where I stayed. Confused, I asked the driver if I’d provided an address. “Aye, no need. I heard your accent and knew you were The American.” 

That my presence and address were common knowledge in the small highland town unnerved me at first. But gradually, it began to feel oddly comforting. 

Nevertheless, when I dialed the public number for RAF Lossiemouth and asked if they could please connect me with the American pilot stationed there, it stunned me when, after identifying myself to the woman on the other end of the line, she said: “Ellen? How wonderful. I’ve been hoping to meet you! Every time I call anywhere locally, they hear my accent and automatically think that I’m Ellen and treat me with great kindness.” 

“That’s both hilarious and incredibly sweet,” I replied. 

I’d assumed she was the pilot—this was the 20th century, after all—but when I explained about the pumpkin and how the grocer had suggested I call, the woman explained that her husband was the pilot. 

“He’s flying a training sortie to England next week, and I’m sure he can pick you up a few cans of pumpkin at the commissary there. He’s already done it for us. No problem.” 

The following week there were three tins of LIBBY’s 100% Pure Pumpkin on the kitchen shelf. 

First, the Church of Scotland. Then, the butcher Macdonald. And now, the Royal Air Force. They say it takes a village, but WOW. 

By the time Thanksgiving Day arrived, my rash idea had become a collective effort. I set the Church’s china on the trestle table, served Macdonald’s piping-hot turkey and stuffing, and plated mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pies, and candied cranberries (another surprise gift from the RAF). Whisky and Irn-Bru, Scotland’s neon-orange soda, flowed freely.

I looked around that crowded room, at colleagues who’d become friends and locals who’d opened their homes and lives to me, and felt something I hadn’t expected: belonging. For all its chaos, Thanksgiving in Scotland wasn’t just a meal. It was proof that sometimes the most impulsive ideas, the ones you leap into without a plan, lead to the most unforgettable moments.