It was Thanksgiving 2005 and we were living abroad in the Netherlands. I actually had to work that day so we hadn’t planned a big dinner, but around noon my wife called and said: “Honey, you won’t believe it, but I was at the market and just on a whim I stopped by the butcher’s shop and asked if they had a turkey, and what do you know but he happened to have a fresh turkey from England, so I’m cooking it now and dinner will be ready when you get home.”

So after work my family enjoyed a tasty American Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey and stuffing and all of the trimmings. It was our very own Thanksgiving miracle.

The rest of the story is that…….. the day after Thanksgiving my wife got a call from our (also American) neighbor, who asked: “Ummm, did you by chance purchase a turkey yesterday at the butcher’s shop?”

Our neighbors had gone to the butcher a few weeks ahead of time and asked him to do a special order of a fresh, never-frozen turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner (you can’t just grab a Butterball at the store), and as you’ve already guessed, we totally stole it out from under them. The neighbor lady had arrived at the butcher’s shop later that day and asked for her turkey, and the butcher said “I had one, but an American lady came in and asked for a turkey, so I sold it to her.”

We felt slightly guilty as we ate delicious turkey leftovers for the next few days, but probably not as guilty as I should have felt.