Gratitude is in the air on College Hill, along with the sound of suitcase wheels on sidewalks. Some students are heading home, looking forward to reunions over tables of food — from turkey to hearty bowls of pho. Others stay on campus and build their own traditions.
The Herald spoke to eight students about how they typically celebrate Thanksgiving with their loved ones.
An aversion to squash
When he was eight years old, Asher Labovich ’26 didn’t like turkey, choosing to opt out of the main course at Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, he scarfed down his grandmother’s squash dish.
“I ate the entire squash, and then I ate another full squash,” Labovich told The Herald.
But now, 14 years later, Labovich’s squash-filled dinner has turned into a yearslong hatred of the vegetable. “I’m so sick of them,” he said. “I haven’t eaten squash since,” he added.
Luckily for Labovich, his family later began a tradition of smoking a 24-hour brisket in addition to the Thanksgiving turkey. “My dad’s the great cook in the family,” Labovich explained. “He’s been working on the brisket recipe for five or six years now.”
“I’m not the best cook, so I mostly help on the stuff that’s not incredibly important,” he added.
This Thanksgiving, Labovich looks forward to making the trip back home to Maryland and spending time with family, especially Sadie, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel. “She’s small — like a mini — and she’s so cute,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple months, so I’m very excited.”
Pit bulls, chinchillas, turtles, guinea pigs and some fish
When she’s at Brown, Olivia Kam ’26 misses “being in the presence of my family” and “relaxing at home in my own room with my pets,” she said. Waiting for her back home in California are two pit bulls, two chinchillas, two turtles, multiple fish and her sister’s two guinea pigs.
“I love them all,” she said, adding that she and her family members are “big animal people.”
Growing up, Kam celebrated a small Thanksgiving with her sister and parents. But after her cousins flew into town for the holiday one year, Kam’s family started hosting larger gatherings.
“It’s really nice to reconnect with everyone, especially the cousins my age, because you grow up with them, and then everyone goes off to college, and you’re all in different places,” Kam said.
Homecoming games
When Mark Henshon ’26 thinks of Thanksgiving, he thinks of games of pickup football. When he was growing up, Henshon and his two brothers would recruit their neighbors to play and “get outside, have some fun.”
“We would always get all the neighborhood kids over to the local park,” he said. “My dad would be the quarterback, and, then, once we got older, one of us would be the quarterback.”
Henshon’s family also enjoys watching football with a side of appetizers before digging into the main meal at 4 or 5 p.m.
The highlight of Thanksgiving dinner is homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream, he said. “That’s something that my brothers and I look forward to every year.”
Now, Henshon treasures Thanksgiving as a homecoming for his close family. “Now that my brothers are getting older, it’s rare that we’re all in the house at the same time,” Henshon said.
Family reunion
As the majority of students vacate College Hill over break, Kieran Flores ’27 plans to stay in Providence with her grandparents.
For Flores, Thanksgiving dinner is a multicultural celebration with around 20 people, including her family and a handful of students who are unable to return home for the holiday. Flores’s grandparents, who are retired professors of Brown and Wesleyan University, have built a tradition of welcoming students to their home for a home-cooked meal.
Flores’s grandmother begins preparing for the meal two days ahead of time. On Thanksgiving day, friends and family join in.
The final dinner table reflects Flores’s multicultural household, showcasing not only traditional Thanksgiving food, but also plates with Eritrean influence, such as zigni and shiro. Flores, who follows a vegan diet, often adds an Asian-inspired tofu dish to the spread as well.
“The bits and parts that almost make it not (a typical) Thanksgiving tradition is what really makes it our tradition,” Flores said.
Hot food and hot gossip
Tommy Nguyen ’27 looks forward to returning home to Michigan for a Thanksgiving meal packed with Vietnamese food, from pho to banh xeo.
On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, when she knows the shelves will be freshly restocked, Nguyen’s mother will draft a grocery list before navigating the aisles of the Vietnamese market with his aunt, Nguyen said. Each year, the menu varies slightly, featuring whatever the family is craving.
Often served alongside the Thanksgiving meal is some fresh gossip, he said, adding that “in Vietnamese households, there’s a tradition where we talk a lot, and there’s a lot of drama.”
For Nguyen, Thanksgiving is especially important as a college student, as he misses the nightly family dinners he used to have while living at home.
“Every dinner we eat together — it’s just me, my sister, my mom and dad,” Nguyen said. When he is away at school, Nguyen’s family often calls him during dinner time, sometimes even remotely ordering food for him to eat with them over the phone.
Tofurkey
Remy Dufresne ’27 usually finds himself in the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, decorating themed cookies with his aunt. Last year, the theme was turkeys.
“We just did a bunch of turkeys, and we had a bunch of different colored icings,” Dufresne said. “We decorated differently and had fun with it.”
Following a vegan diet, Dufresne does not eat turkey. Instead, he prefers either a pre-made vegan Thanksgiving meal from Whole Foods or some “tofurkey” — tofu filled with stuffing. Dufreshne also loves “a good side vegetable,” he added.
Dufresne, who is an only child, looks forward to driving to New Hampshire each year to see his cousins and his mother’s side of the family. “It’s the one day a year I get to see my extended family all together,” he said.
“We have a photo that is now framed in all of our houses,” Dufresne said, describing a picture where his family is squeezed together — his grandfather mid-bite, eating a chicken thigh. “He looks kind of crazy in that photo, and everybody else is smiling,” Dufresne said.
Thinking of home
Like many international students, Lavanya Garg ’28, who is from India and the Philippines, does not return home for Thanksgiving. She described campus as “really empty and quiet” when her friends leave for home.
“I also want to go home, but obviously it’s just too far to go for a week,” Garg said. “During that time, I call my friends, I call my family and stay connected through that.” But Garg added that even staying in contact online can be difficult with the time difference, which only allows her to call her family late at night or early in the morning.
Rather than traveling home for Thanksgiving, Garg reunites with other friends who are studying in the United States. Together, they cook Indian food and bake desserts to celebrate.
“Last year, I went down to New York to see my friend, and this year, she’s coming (up) to see me,” Garg said. Last year, the two of them cooked and watched “Wicked.” “We’re going to see it again this year,” she added.
Jingle bells
When she celebrates Thanksgiving with her father, Mara Duran-Clark ’27 becomes head chef, taking charge of the entire meal. In order to have enough time to prepare a lemon ginger turkey, five types of potatoes and several pies, Duran-Clark begins cooking the day she returns home for Thanksgiving break.
When Duran-Clark stays with her mother for Thanksgiving, the dinner features influence from Dominican cuisines and includes dishes like pernil.
No matter where she is, “the general feel is the same,” Duran-Clark said. “It’s a big emphasis on being in community and being with family.”
Duran-Clark also reminisced on childhood Thanksgivings, when she would travel to her grandparents’ home in Vermont. She recalled her grandmother’s passion for “Thanksgiving songs.”
“She was really big into the belief that Jingle Bells is a Thanksgiving song,” Duran-Clark said. “So, we’d sing that before we started eating.”
