University of Minnesota Moment: Immigrant Holiday Assimilation

Transcription

[Announcer]: I'm Rick Moore with the University of Minnesota Moment. As more immigrants settle in Minnesota, their ethnic foods and customs get blended with and added to existing traditions. Donna Gabaccia, director of the U's Immigration Research History Center, explains that this type of assimilation has been happening for years.

[Gabaccia]: Newcomers come to the United States, which has a cycle of holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year's—some of them religious, some of them secular, but most of them involving celebrations that feature food—and newcomers have brought their own customs, some of which then become American, like the German Christmas Tree, and others of which become sort of ethnic additions to holiday celebrations around this time of year, and I'm thinking specifically of Lutefisk dinners. The newcomers to Minnesota—the Hmong, the Somalians, the Mexicans and Central Americans—are in the process of introducing their own food customs to American holidays.

[Moore]: All immigrant populations find a way to participate in existing holiday celebrations.

[Gabaccia]: Every non-Christian immigrant group are faced with a conundrum, right? What are they going to celebrate at this time, and increasingly New Year's is becoming a focus of attention where immigrants … there's going to be an accommodation. Jews also didn't celebrate Christmas, and yet they elaborated, like Asians are today with New Year's, Jewish immigrants elaborated an existing festival, Hanukkah, into a much bigger event.

[Moore]: With the University of Minnesota Moment, I'm Rick Moore.