All across the country many Latino families will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. While many ethnic communities have various forms of the tradition, the American version of Thanksgiving is uniquely a nationalistic celebration.

FERNANDEZ FAMILY
This week, StoryCorps Historias brings the story of one family’s first Thanksgiving meal. 

Jose Fernandez came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1960s. He was a teenager when his family arrived in Florida. And here, from our StoryCorps booth in New York, he tells his wife, Teresita, about that first November.

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DIAZ FAMILY
Now another story about sharing a meal. 

It comes from Julio Diaz, a social worker from the Bronx. 

Every night diaz ends his hour-long subway commute one stop early just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

 But one night as he stepped off the train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

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CARRANZA FAMILY
When he was a poor kid, Adolph Carranza remembers how donations from the Salvation Army would come around the holidays. Among the exotic canned goods he recalls was this strange jelly-like substance called “cranberries” that no one wanted to try in his household.

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Last year StoryCorps launched a new holiday tradition — it’s called the National Day of Listening, which happens on the day after Thanksgiving. StoryCorps encourages you to take an hour on that day to sit down with a relative or loved one and ask them about their life. 
 
StoryCorps has do-it-yourself materials to help you get a great interview and preserve it for your family — and they’re available for free online.