ABS Community Gives Thanks with Traditional Holiday Feast
ABS vice president Frances Huttanus, left, and ABS executive director Aliki Elias. Pulse News Mexico photo/Thérèse Margolis
By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS
With perhaps the largest turnout in recent history, the American Benevolent Society (ABS) of Mexico hosted its annual Thanksgiving Day luncheon at Christ Church Parish on Thursday, Nov. 23.
In addition to a massive banquet of turkey, sage dressing, a seemingly endless array for cooked and fresh vegetables, ambrosia salad and freshly baked pumpkin pie, the event, which was hosted by ABS vice president Frances Huttanus and ABS executive director Aliki Elias, included an impromptu musical performance by ABS member Kathleen Clement’s son and daughter-in-law.
Huttanus took the opportunity to point out on that “Thanksgiving is a distinctively American holiday.”
“There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world,” she said.
“It celebrates neither a savage battle nor the fall of a great city. It does not mark the anniversary of a great conqueror or the birthday of a famous stateman.”
Instead, she said, the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday “is the expression of a deep feeling of gratitude by our people for the rich productivity of the land, a memorial of the dangers and hardships through which we have safely passed, and a fitting recognition of all that God in His goodness has bestowed upon us.”
Huttanus then went on to read the story of the five grains of corn that the earliest European settlers had rationed to them each day during their first terrible winter in the Americas, a winter than led to the death of nearly half of all the Mayflower pilgrims.
Founded in 1868, the American Benevolent Society is a nonprofit organization that provides charitable assistance to both U.S. and Mexican nationals during periods of personal distress or financial need.
The ABS will also be hosting its annual Christmas holiday luncheon and caroling event led by David Santos at Christ Church on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at 1:30 p.m.
The cost for attendance is 300 pesos for ABS members and 350 pesos for nonmembers.