For the third consecutive year, I have been blessed with the opportunity to host Thanksgiving dinner in the Syunik province of Armenia. This year I gathered the villagers of Meghri’s Dashdoon, the neighboring village to Lijk where I currently stay. While I had originally intended to host Thanksgiving in the same village every year, to build a custom for the locals in hopes that they would organize the gathering themselves one day, this year I prioritized celebrating Thanksgiving in a village hosting Artsakhtsis, given the mass exodus from Artsakh. 

The village of Dashdoon

In September, the villagers of Dashdoon took it upon themselves to open their doors to those displaced from Artsakh, fixing up abandoned homes and offering them rent free in perpetuity to those willing to resettle in Armenia’s south. Dashdoon, which has less than 100 permanent residents, initially took in 10 families who the locals had met in Goris or had contacted in response to their Facebook posts looking for housing. Eight families totalling over 30 people remain today in Dashdoon and are set on staying in their new homes. The village now plans to reopen their school for the new children and hopes to accept more families in the coming months.

Three years ago, when I first decided to host Thanksgiving dinners in Syunik, my hope was to replicate the Armenian Relief Society Thanksgiving luncheons that I attended for years in Chicago. My first attempt was far from it, as the dinner in Davit Bek was entirely comprised of men, with the exception of one grandmother who washed dishes and her grandson who had come to help. Last year, I held two dinners, one in Ghapan’s southern Dzav village on the border with Artsakh, and one in Artsakh’s Marduni village of Ashan. Both dinners were an improvement, with a significant turnout of women and a handful of children, but it was still far from the family luncheons we enjoy in our community in the United States. 

This year’s Thanksgiving gathering

This year was by far the closest in resemblance to our diasporan Armenian community life and the most fun of all the dinners I have hosted. There were over 80 people in attendance, with all but a handful joining to feast on the local shepherds’ lambs, including all of the children of the village and many of the women and elderly. 

“It’s just jermuk, genats!”

My day began with the slaughtering of the lambs with some of the local men, a mix of Artsakhtsis and locals who had already become close friends over the last two months. For lunch we fried the organs and some of the tmag, or sheep tail, with a few toasts of local vodka before setting up the hall in preparation for dinner. Once everyone had gathered, our local Der Hayr, Der Rafael, led a prayer to start our evening. The hall was soon filled with sounds of joy and laughter as we dined together, only to be interrupted by the occasional genats (toast) to our land, families and soldiers. 

We sang and danced all night

As with every Thanksgiving I have hosted in Syunik, it was raised that this was the first time in many years that the village had gathered for a happy reason rather than for mourning. It did not take much of the local oghi for the villagers to start singing and dancing, creating a beautiful moment of peace and happiness despite the hardships and dark days we are living in. 

A week prior, my friend Shant Charchaf had toured an Artsakhtsi puppet show in Syunik. We hosted one in Dashdoon, where I learned that a few of the children from Artsakh knew how to play the shvi and dhol, but had left their instruments behind. I immediately reached out to my good friend Alek Surenian from Chicago to see if we could raise some funds to purchase instruments and lessons. We succeeded in doing so in one day, and those very instruments were put to good use at our Thanksgiving dinner. 

I want to give a special thank you to Shant and to Alek for investing in the Armenian culture of Dashdoon and to all my friends who contributed to my dinner and gave residents new and old an opportunity to spend a wonderful evening together over a delicious lamb dinner.