Text:

“One tradition that my family does, in conjunction with other Malaysian families, is that during Thanksgiving, we always have a hotpot dinner at one of our family friends’ houses. It’s been a tradition for the past five to ten years. We would always go to their house, and everyone would bring dishes together — fish meatballs, mushrooms, noodles — and it would just be the most amazing meal, because they would always put spicy sauce in it.”

Context:

The informant is 21 years old and is from a Malaysian immigrant family. He told me of this tradition when I asked him how his community celebrates American holidays. His family does the classic American Thanksgiving things — the big get-together, the kids’ table, the older cousins showing up — but the main event at the meal is Malaysian hotpot. Through a web of Malaysian families bound by social ties and maintained by shared celebrations, this practice has been sustained for almost a decade.

Analysis:

This custom is an example of cultural syncretism, the creative blending of two disparate cultural forms to produce a new creation. But the informant’s family has adopted the American Thanksgiving framework and filled it with the culinary and social content of Malaysian culture. Hotpot is in itself a very social way of eating, requiring the collective effort of diners to cook around a communal pot. The tradition illustrates how immigrant folk communities negotiate their sense of belonging: not choosing between cultures but adding one to the other, creating a hybrid celebration that acknowledges both the country of origin and the country of residence. The lore here is not in any one dish, but in the annual act of gathering. The continuity of people, place, and a shared dish.