Roasted Alligator or Fried Rattlesnake?

A Filipino Thanksgiving

By David Haldane

Dec. 4, 2023

I gave them fair warning.

“OK,” I said, facing a bevy of Filipino in-laws, nephews, and nieces, “it’s almost Thanksgiving. We have a family tradition here that everyone at the table must say why they’re thankful.”

There were murmurs all around from my Bisayan-speaking relatives.

“Oh yes,” I added, almost as an afterthought, “and because it’s an American holiday, it’s got to be in English. I’m telling you early so that you can prepare.”

Suddenly, the murmur rose to a roar.

Which reminded me of my Filipino wife’s first Thanksgiving back in 2008. She had never seen a turkey, let alone cooked one. And so we bought a pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner, complete with all the trappings, including, of course, the gigantic bird. Then, working together, we somehow heated it to the correct temperature and laid it out on our table for the best Thanksgiving ever. Because, like the pilgrims before us, we were celebrating a recent arrival to those frontier American shores, namely hers.

“Gosh,” she told me later, “I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.”

Ah, but now we live in the Philippines where many still languish in the Thanksgivingless dark. And so, we’ve made it our mission to spread a few rays of Thanksgivingish light.

To be sure, the job has proven challenging. The biggest problem, by far, has been locating one of those giant edible birds to grace our table each year. While perhaps that wouldn’t be so difficult in Manila or Cebu, here in Northern Mindanao, it’s nearly impossible. And so for the last several years we’ve settled for an alternate roasted animal at the center of our table, namely lechon.

I know what you’re thinking; what’s so bad about that? It’s practically the national dish, and delicious to boot! Which, of course, is abundantly true. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving. For an American like me accustomed to roasted turkey on the fourth Thursday of each November, well, it’s somehow just not the same.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, however, made me feel much better. Some Americans, it seems, are tiring of turkey. “More hosts,” the headline reads, “opt for exotic meats this holiday.”

Among those revolutionary dishes are antelope, camel, kangaroo, elk, squirrel, and bear. Also, ostrich, elk, python, and rattlesnake. But by far the most popular, the newspaper reports, is—wait for it—yes, smoked alligator wrapped in bacon!

The “mild taste and tender texture can’t be beat,” the Journal reports, attributing that opinion to a 40-year-old nurse anesthetist who lives near Chicago and spends her free time hunting alligators.

Suddenly roasted pig doesn’t seem so strange anymore.

And so, we ate it again a couple of weeks ago at this year’s family Thanksgiving dinner. Along with baked yam, sweet potatoes covered with pecan, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes with white chicken-flavored gravy, roasted chicken, green bean casserole, ube cake, tapioca fruit salad, frozen mango float covered with graham crackers, watermelon, wine, and cooked crab garnished with garlic.

I mean, sheesh, how much yummier can it get?

Then came the time for those mandatory confessions…er, declarations of thanks.

There was lots of hemming and hawing, mixed with long silences, nervous laughter, and furtive glances at notes compiled on cell phones. “I’m thankful for, um, my family, good health, good food, and good fortune,” declared one particularly courageous soul, carefully concentrating on her diction.

She pretty much spoke for us all.

Finally, my turn came. “I’m also thankful for those things,” I averred. “Oh, and one more thing: I’m thankful to be writing a new weekly column for the Manila Times.”

My fondest hope is that one day soon, the readers of this venerable newspaper will share in that sentiment.

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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Joshua Tree, California, and Surigao City, Philippines. His latest book, A Tooth in My Popsicle and other Ebullient Essays on Becoming Filipino, is available on Lazada and Amazon. This column appears every Monday in the Manila Times.