So, does Thanksgiving have anything to do with Pilgrims and Indians anymore?” asked a French member of Double Entendre, my French class’s cultural exchange Facebook group.

While they were asking us about Thanksgiving, we were asking them about the university strikes that were in progress, no doubt expecting the same typically-French leftist replies from everyone à la “we’re not for sale.” But our generalizations were wrong; the replies of the students of Nanterre, a Parisian university where many students were setting up “blockades,” were hardly all the same stereotypical rhetoric. While many had reservations about privatization, it was only an activist minority that held the opinions we had come to expect. Some students were against the strikes; some were apathetic; some thought that they were not likely to strike a significant blow against privatization by not coming to class. The backgrounds and beliefs of the French students turned out to be extremely diverse.

At least as much as those on the American side. When our international counterparts posed the question about our beloved national holiday, were they expecting a quintessentially American response from everyone? In return for their thoughts on the strikes, they got at least ten different answers about the nature of Thanksgiving from Penn students. Some had families who held traditional dinners with turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc.; they performed the ritual of going around the table to say what they were thankful for; and they invited their entire extended family to dinner. But others didn’t have much of an attachment to the holiday, either because they disliked the food or because their families were spread out across the country or the globe and were not able to celebrate together. The Pilgrims-and-Indians history mattered for some and meant nothing to others. Still others saw Thanksgiving just as a convenient break from school. Everyone had a different experience to tell, a different take on what mattered most.

There were so many different (read: not typically “American”) opinions, that one response questioned whether it was even useful to consider all of them – after all, about a third of the respondents, myself included, came from international backgrounds. So did we really know what Thanksgiving was about? Did all of us have equal ownership of the holiday or were some more entitled to it than others? I found myself questioning my own relationship with this cultural phenomenon. Having grown up mostly in the United States, I certainly understood it better than the French students seeking information on Facebook. But did I get it in the same way as Americans of many generations?

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a stranger looking in on American traditions. On a recent visit to the Liberty Bell in downtown Philadelphia, I identified more with international tourists trying to make sense of American cultural semiotics than with anyone getting patriotic value from the exhibit. The same goes for things like football, the Fourth of July, apple pie, and The Star-Spangled Banner. These American staples don’t stir up any nationalistic feelings (though of course I sang the national anthem every morning in elementary school). In fact, they can engender feelings of isolation; if you didn’t grow up with apple pie, it seems pretty foreign, just like the Liberty Bell to those tourists. More so, if everyone around you grew up internalizing these icons while you were absorbing a random blend of two different cultural codes, apple pie can reinforce your detachment. But a tradition like Thanksgiving doesn’t carry the same disconnect. Ask me about apple pie or football and maybe I’ll feel like my opinion is not that valuable, but Thanksgiving is different. Maybe it’s the fact that the original Thanksgiving was celebrated by both people who were new to this country and people who had been here for centuries, but I don’t think that’s all.

The many types of Thanksgiving out there lead me to believe that the holiday’s plasticity is what prevents it from falling in line with the traditions mentioned above. The Liberty Bell is a relatively rigid cultural symbol, but everyone has their own personal Thanksgiving. Where The Star Spangled Banner is official and unapproachable, Thanksgiving is more flexible and accepting of new interpretations.

Personally, I’ve been through them all – big Thanksgivings at friends’ houses and small ones with just my parents. This year, I spent the day with a friend I have known for fourteen years, whose family I often see on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We used to watch Disney movies and play games together as we waited for dinner to be served. This year, our time together included fewer Disney movies and much more going out in the rain to smoke. It wasn’t the same Thanksgiving of our childhood, in the same way as the holiday in general is no longer the Thanksgiving of our country’s beginnings. But it was still Thanksgiving.

Though we can pretend to have a generalized idea of what Thanksgiving is, in reality everyone has his own experience and interpretation. We can stick to a Platonic archetype of a “true” Thanksgiving, prescribing turkeys and cranberry sauce, grandparents and uncles, saying grace and giving thanks, but that doesn’t change reality. Today, for every traditional Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving out there, there is a different experience of the holiday with its own meaning. And every “atypical” or “un-American” experience is as valid as the prototype celebration. After all, what matters for understanding Thanksgiving today is how it exists now, and not what it “should be.”